Those Campbell Boys
by l. marie benjamin
Summary: When a demon attacks one of the team members, an impossible world opens up for another and a mother's secrets will change everything. To save reality they must make a complex journey through time and space that will reveal hidden destinies and unimaginable power. Post Season 5 finales for both shows.
1. And It So Began in the Same Way

_A/N: Check My Profile For The Soundtrack To This Story_**  
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**Those Campbell Boys  
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**Characters**: Dean, Spencer, Morgan, Sam, Castiel, Garcia, ensembles, OCs.  
**Ratings**: Strong R for graphic violence, language and sexual themes  
**Warnings/Spoilers**: Up to current seasons.  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own canon characters and they remain the property of their original owners.  
**Summary:** When a demon attacks one of the team members, an impossible world opens up for another and a mother's secrets will change everything. Post Season 5 finales for both shows.

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**Chapter One**

**And it so began in the same way . . .**

Note making was the most tedious part of the job, or so he'd been told. Emily, Derek, Rossi: all had voiced their displeasure at one point in time or another regarding the last and most necessary part of a case. JJ was spared most of it as media liaison and Garcia was lucky in that all her work was simultaneously documented and recorded in real time on the machinery she worked on. The only one he had never heard complain was Hotch but Hotch never complained about anything, ever. His long-suffering was so silent as to be non-existent. Spencer knew he was the only member of his team that actually _liked_ this part of the process.

He understood the source of his colleagues' displeasure, locked in the tedium and repetition of words and actions, but he also appreciated why it was considered the core and essential part of a case. Yes, catching an unsub before he or she can continue their actions was important but the Federal Bureau of Investigation operated as the principal investigative arm of the United States Department of Justice. Justice didn't end in the catching of a criminal, it began. Justice was encapsulated in the judicial process, the trying and conviction of the guilty that could not function with only the arrest of a suspect. If the notes in a case were lacking then that very same unsub who was caught with so much thought, manpower and at times, blood sacrifice, would make their way out of lockup before formal charges could be brought. That scenario left no one safer and most likely left society at large worse off than before the unsub was caught.

Those were the thoughts that occupied Dr. Spencer Reid's mind whenever the tedium did start to get to him. He joined the bureau at twenty years old filled with the same ideals and protracted thinking so he could keep his eyes on what was most important in the work he did and so he could understand his place in it.

He took painstaking notes in longhand on his commute from Quantico to his apartment in Washington, DC on those nights right after the close of a case. The plane would land, as much work that could be done would be done at the office but when he knew sleep was creeping up on him, he waved goodnight to whoever was left, Phil the janitor and Hotch in his office, sometimes Morgan who occasionally suffered bouts of insomnia and sometimes Prentiss stayed with him when she likewise suffered bouts of loneliness.

Spencer would catch his train and uncomfortably relive, in the crystal clear theater of his detail-oriented mind, the entire case from the moment JJ pulled the file to the moment an arrest was made or the coroner was called. On the integrity of those notes, cases were won, convictions were leveled, and the Office of Professional Responsibility was kept at bay.

On reaching his condo which flanked Chinatown, Spencer would input his information into the computer program Garcia had written for the team so they could work their data entry from home. Everything had operated as it always had except when Spencer turned on his monitor all he got in return was a stark blue screen.

"Ouch," Derek said the next morning with a half stifled yawn. "Blue screen of doom."

Absently pouring enough sugar into his coffee to make it a paste, Spencer began, "I did everything the manual said to do in that situation—"

"The 'manual' wants you to contact tech support, _especially_ if your warranty is up." The BAU offices were still relatively empty as the workday wouldn't start for another half hour. Hotch was already in his office taking phone calls.

"I was on with the support team until three but they couldn't figure out what was going on."

Morgan looked him over, "Three? I went to bed at two and I feel like a zombie."

Spencer gestured to his mug, "You want me to make you some?"

"Um," Derek contemplated the instant and torturous death of his pancreas. "That's okay, kid. Thanks."

Spencer took a sip of his coffee and screwed up his face in disgust. He added more sugar. "They said I'll probably have to buy a new one."

"Of course they did," Derek said, rolling his eyes. "You know what you need?"

"A functioning computer?"

"A house call from Garcia," he said, just as the elevator doors beyond the glass walls opened and in walked a morning-ready Penelope Garcia. Catching her eye before she turned down the hall to go to her office, Derek went to the door and opened it for her. "Good morning, Baby Girl."

"Good morning, Sugar," she said with a bright, red-lipped smile. In one ear was a coconut shaped earring and in the other was a pineapple. He had two guesses what she would be craving come happy hour. "Is this call business or pleasure? Just note you get a cookie if you say pleasure."

"Our boy's got computer problems," he explained.

Narrowing her eyes and looking over Derek's shoulders to Reid she hummed. "Der, Reid can do anything that doesn't involve females," she whispered conspiratorially.

"Blue screen."

"Oh!" She said, instantly understanding, walking past him and going to Reid. "When hardware and software collude, it's a sad sad day."

Spencer's brows went up, "I'm not sure there was any collusion involved."

She reached out, holding his free hand in a sign of support, explaining, "The blue screen is a harmony of complete system failure."

Confirming what he'd heard from the tech support team the night before, Spencer nodded, "I'll get a new computer."

"Heck no! Sweetie, I can fix that up _no problemo_," she beamed, moving past him and going towards his work machine.

"Oh, it's my desktop at home," he said before she reached his desk.

Stopping in her tracks, Garcia could barely control the expansive smile that practically took over her entire face and she slowly turned back towards him with a manic gleam in her eyes. "Your place?"

Spencer frowned and mumbled, "Huh?"

"It's just, I've never been to your place and I'm fifteen shades past curious by now. Der's the only one who's ever seen it and whenever we ask about it—"

"You guys ask about it?"

"—he acts like he took the vow of Omertà—"

Derek interjected, "I do not." Though he knew he did and he enjoyed the reactions he always got from Rossi and the ladies.

"—and now I get to join the Cabal!"

"Baby Girl, you sound _way_ too happy about that," Derek laughed.

"There's really not that much to see—" Spencer explained as she walked back towards the glass doors.

"Uh huh," she said, dismissing his words.

"It's just a regular condominium—"

"Yeah, sure," she nodded. "Barring a torrent of homicidal crazy people and a case that requires our Go bags, I will pick you up, Dr. Reid, at five sharp." And with that, she was gone.

Spencer stood there in the middle of the office wondering what had just happened. He turned to Morgan and only said, "When did my apartment become a conspiracy?"

Derek hummed on his way to his desk, "When I made it one."

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	2. Sin

_A/N: You can select and copy the entire chunk (no need to do it line by line) of the binary and paste into any binary to text decoder you find from any search engine._

**Chapter Two  
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**010100110110100101101110**

"No, Will, it's fine . . . of course I'm sure . . . she'll watch him 'til I can get there . . . if I wasn't sure I'd be giving you hell right now and you _know_ it," JJ said with a mischievous smile, speaking in soft tones into her phone. Emily, who had been blatantly eavesdropping, stifled a snort from just beyond JJ's door. She'd been two steps from entering the small, cramped office when she heard Jayj answer her ringing cell. "If anything comes up I'll call but it looks like we're just doing paperwork and consults today . . . okay . . . love you . . . yeah I said it first, don't have a heart attack," she said, rolling her eyes. "Okay . . . be safe . . . bye." Closing her phone, JJ flopped over the top of her paper strewn desk and smiled like a Cheshire cat, allowing herself a moment of silly abandon when she thought no one was watching.

"Very sweet," Emily said, swinging past the threshold of the office. "My teeth hurt now, that was so sweet."

Bolting up in her chair, JJ's face turned pale white then bright red as she burst out in a laugh. "I hate you."

"Yeah yeah," Em said with a smile, leaning against the doorframe. "How's VSP treating him?"

JJ pictured Will as he was leaving home that morning in his Virginia State Police uniform and she grinned. "He doesn't really _say_ it, you know? But he's glad to be back on the job. He did the whole _stay at home dad thing_ and it was great, he was great, but if we're gonna move into a bigger place we needed the money."

"I get ya." Emily pointed over her shoulder, "We're ordering."

"Where?"

"Sosaku?"

JJ screwed up her face, "The sushi's always warm."

With a shrug Emily said, "It's Tuesday—"

Nodding and rolling her eyes, "Hotch's choice. Hotch and his udon."

"I usually play it safe with a Philly roll."

"Ooh, ditto on that."

Emily pointed at her then gave her a thumbs up as she retreated back to the hallway.

"Two Philly rolls," she said to Morgan who was writing down the orders from the midst of the bullpen.

"Always playing it safe," Rossi said, looking over the menu.

"Says the man who _always_ gets chicken teriyaki," Emily said, plucking the menu from his fingers.

With a shrug Rossi conceded, "Teriyaki, like sake, is _supposed_ to be warm. Sushi is not."

Spencer, from his seat, reached over with his long arms and plucked the menu from Emily, interjecting, "Did you ever consider the sushi is always warm because Hotch always gets a large udon? The heat convection of the soup warms the receptive solids in the bag?" Everyone looked at him and pondered that for a moment. "Granted," he continued, his nose in the pamphlet as he quickly read over the generous list of available options, "lighter fish meat can grow bacteria at an exponential rate as compared to darker fish meat, like tuna or salmon, at the slightest exposure to higher temperatures." He looked up to the group, "But it's a trade off as tuna and salmon will generally have higher heavy metal levels than lighter fish."

Everyone stared at him open mouthed. The color of his cheeks darkened. "Um, that's why I usually stick to tamago yaki . . ." Morgan snatched the menu from him with an exasperated look and drew a line through the orders he'd already taken.

Emily took an about-face and went back to JJ's office with a narrowed down list of choices: chicken or eggs.

* * *

"Shake your tail, baby cakes," Garcia said, entering the bullpen at five o'clock on the dot. In her hand was her emergency travel kit filled with enough parts to build a supercomputer from scratch. Morgan looked over his desk to Reid's and chuckled into his fist. Prentiss leaned back in her chair and grinned. No matter what, Garcia had promised details and perhaps even pictures if she could swing it.

Spencer looked up to her with wide eyes over a manila folder. "It's five already?"

"Nice try. Your internal clock might as well be made out of quartz." He placed down the folder which stood open and empty on his desk. She looked to it and hummed, "Uh huh."

"Garcia, I was thinking maybe I'd just get a new—"

"Up, up," she insisted, waving her hands like an expressive mezzo soprano. "Like a vampire, I have been invited in, no take backs. You're the one who said there was nothing to see," she reminded him.

"Derek kinda convinced me that an air of mystery is a good thing." She was hauling him up now.

"Your place is a mess, isn't it?" She guessed.

"Perennially," he confessed.

"Yeah, well, you haven't seen Kevin's place. Unless your roaches are big enough to put a leash on, you'll be fine."

Grabbing his jacket and screwing up his face in disgust as she tugged on him he said, "I do _not_ have cockroaches—"

* * *

She'd had expectations but they hadn't been wild. Penelope wasn't a profiler but she'd gleaned enough over the years to have certain set thoughts about what Spencer Reid's apartment should have looked like. Knowing him and his personality . . . no, they weren't overly interesting expectations despite Derek's constant teasing. All she really could say was that there were supposed to be books and ginormous bookcases: tall floor to ceiling mahogany structures and his place was supposed to smell like a musty old university.

It smelled like dim sum.

"What did he say?" She asked, just outside Reid's apartment and gesturing behind her to a man who was moving down the hall in the opposite direction.

Digging for his keys, his hair falling to his eyes he said, "Loosely translated, _Yo, what up, Spence?_"

"I can't believe you speak—" she was going to say _Chinese_ before she self-corrected. "Um—"

"Taishanese."

"Uh _huh_ . . ."

"It's the lingua franca of most North American Chinatowns," he said, opening his door. Seeing the look on her face, the look he'd grown accustomed to whenever he did or said something he never expected to get a '_look'_ for, he explained, "I've ordered my share of takeout growing up."

She murmured, "Yeah . . . my dad was from Veracruz but I still order my Tex-Mex by number."

Spencer flicked on the light and closed the door behind her as Penelope Garcia exhaled all the air in her body.

It was supposed to be a library but it was an art gallery. Where she expected the bookshelves to line the walls, instead there were framed prints covering every available section of space. Pissarro, Monet, Van Gogh, Rossetti, Waterhouse . . . it was a sea of color over a sky-blue wall. She could only tell the color of the wall from the half-inch distance between frames.

"Oh my—"

Reid rushed over to the large paper-strewn oak table that was situated in the center of the space that was supposed to be his living room. Instead of the traditional couch and coffee table, there was just the desk and a tall, comfortable looking stool. In the corner there was an old leather Chesterfield armchair and a matching ottoman. He scooped up the papers in his arms as she let out a laugh that was partway shock, amusement and surprise—

"_That's_ the mess? Reid," she turned around in the apartment doing a full 360, "_What_—I don't even—where are your _books_?" She spluttered, saying the only thing that came to her mind.

"Derek asked the same thing, it's so weird," he said, packing away the papers into neat piles. "An eidetic memory means I can recall any page of any book I've ever read. It's a lot faster to remember something I want to reread then _actually_ reread it."

"Wait, you don't _keep_ books?"

"Like a collection? No," he said with a vigorous shrug as if the idea was abhorrent. "I mean, I have a volume of Proust," he said, heading over to the Chesterfield and picking up the old tome from the ottoman. He'd carried the book with him from Las Vegas all those years ago and brought it with him to school then to the academy and then here. He placed it on his desk next to the papers. "But that's strictly for sentimental reasons, I acknowledge that. I believe libraries are the only organizations that should keep book collections."

"Why?"

To him the reason was clear: "So people can have access to them." He looked over his walls, "Art reprints are disseminative, universal. Generic _copies_ but a copy of a book is _still_ a book that remains that _particular_ book and it retains its inherent value and worth even if it were Xeroxed over and over in black and white, color, Braille. Even in summary and translation, a book is always unique and there will always be someone somewhere who won't have access to it. Whatever I decide to read I usually just do it at the library. Doesn't take very long. I'll only utilize a book through circulation if it's . . ."

"Thinky?"

He nodded with a bashful smile, "Yep."

Standing next to him and looking at the wall she quietly asked, "So, why art?"

"It's strange," he said, his slender fingers reaching out to touch the gold foil of a Klimt, ". . . but I always notice something new." He smiled to her and explained, "Depends on my mood. It's completely interpretative. There's no extant evidence Freud actually said it but there's a saying that _sometimes a cigar is just a cigar_ but the opposite is generally true in art. A cigar is never a cigar. No one learns to draw or paint just to do what photography does. Besides, I'm of the mind that to Freud everything that _could_ be phallic symbolism _was_, but that's another topic entirely," he said, turning around and heading to the adjoining room that was separated by white-washed sliding louver doors. The doors opened up onto a decent sized bedroom that held a queen-sized bed that was low to the ground with a modern, clean line headboard and no footboard.

Like the living room, the walls of this room were too covered in prints but this time of a classical vein: da Vinci, Titian, Tintoretto, Raphael, Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Mantegna—

"Holy mother of—" Garcia breathed, looking up to the ceiling at a frame by frame replica of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel put together like a jigsaw puzzle.

He followed her gaze and nodded, "Yeah, Morgan helped me put that up. Tried to do it myself but it was vertigo inducing." He quirked his lip to the side. "Fell twice." He pointed to his closet door that held a full-sized version of the Vitruvian Man with a towel bar nestled above his hips and a towel hiding his decency. He hummed, "Morgan did that too."

With unhidden excitement she asked, "What's in the kitchen?"

"A refrigerator—" She squeezed his hand and he laughed, "Fine! Mostly Pollock, Rothko, Diebenkorn. I don't know why but they kind of just scream _food_ to me and it's less pedestrian than putting up framed cornucopias."

"Bathroom? And _don't_ say toilet," she warned.

"Strictly Haring, Lichtenstein and Warhol. I usually need to wake up a bit in the shower." That was too much; she latched onto his wrist and pulled him. "But the computer—"

"Hell, it'll still be broken when we come back!" She squealed and with that Penelope Garcia got a full tour of Spencer Reid's apartment. She felt like she was in a more intimate version of the Salon de Paris. "Oh my gosh," she breathed, a hand on her chest after exiting the bathroom. They'd gone through the entire apartment with Reid detailing the pieces she was unfamiliar with and revealing unknown details about the ones she recognized. There were just a few empty spots reserved for pieces he was deciding on and she'd made a few suggestions that made him feel silly for not thinking of. "The _air of mystery_ is crap compared to the real thing. Even your shower curtain! I want a _Whaam!_ shower curtain!"

"eBay," he said simply.

"Seriously?"

"You can find almost anything on eBay," he explained. They walked back into the bedroom where, just to the side of his bed sat a lonely computer desk that in her previous excitement she'd neglected to notice before.

"Oh, and now we've come full circle 'cause for you to go on eBay to get anymore cool stuff, I have to fix your machine." Going to it, she started up the large monitor and stared at the blue screen. "Okay baby," she cracked her knuckles. "Let's tango."

"Huh—" Garcia said three minutes later.

"That was a short dance," Spencer said from his reclined position on his bed.

"I'm getting a crap-load of binary," she said, staring at the now black screen as white letters zipped down, filling it up. "Baby's trying to call out to momma." Over her shoulder she said, "Reid, translation needed."

"You know computers don't—" he stopped speaking as his eyes focused on the repeating lines of ones and zeros.

"Is it like _'error, error'_ or '_holy shit, I'm dying'_?"

"Um . . . it says _sin_."

"Reid, what kind of site were you on before this thing went down?" She asked, smiling and shaking her head. If the problem was viral it would be _so_ much easier to fix.

"That was a pornography reference, wasn't it?"

"And never mind," she said with a laugh. Typing into her remote override, she entered a protocol with the keyword 'sin.' A different string of code filled the screen.

"Punish," Reid supplied, standing now and moving behind her.

"Kinky," she muttered, repeating the protocol with the new keyword. New code.

Spencer swallowed. Why did this feel familiar? He choked out, "Choose."

"What?"

"Sin. Punish. Choose."

"Choose _what_?"

"Put it in," he said. The moment she did Spencer's screen filled up with a desaturated video image of a car interior. The shot was from just above the driver's side window and the space was empty. In the back was a baby seat.

"I know that car—" Garcia breathed, the surreal moment immediately turning and twisting her insides. "I bought that baby seat."

A moment later the back passenger's side door opened and a blonde-haired woman reached in, a child in her arms as she secured him in the small chair.

"JJ," Spencer said, rushing to his phone that was plugged in on his side table. Pressing her speed dial, he watched the screen in anticipation as his end of the line rang but she went on as if nothing was happening. "Maybe it's not a live image—"

Garcia shook her head, her eyes glued to the screen. "She never picks Henry up from Mrs. Walker's. She told me Will was gonna run late tonight so that's why she's there."

"Something's blocking the call—"

The image on the screen changed to reveal a small two story home that was familiar to them both. Henry had been christened in that house and both Reid and Garcia had been there to accept their roles as godparents.

"JJ's," Garcia said a moment before a figure, all in black, slowly entered the frame and walked up the lane and to the front door. Opening the door without marking a mark, the figure slipped in and closed it behind. The screen suddenly split into four sections: the top right showed JJ driving, the top left showed the exterior of her house and the bottom revealed a series of images from traffic cameras that tracked JJ's progress from the front and behind.

"Mrs. Walker's is twenty minutes away from her house—"

There was a sinking feeling in his gut as he realized the house was thirty minutes from his. Jumping up and grabbing his keys he said, "Call everybody, get them to JJ's!"

"Reid!" Garcia called, tossing him hers. He looked confused for a moment before she said, "Your car's a piece of junk!"

He blankly nodded, "Right," before racing out of his apartment.

Furiously dialing numbers with one hand and typing with another she entered a new protocol and was fed a new, longer binary chain that was in transparent white over the video images. Feeding it into an app on her phone she nearly dropped it as if it burned her when she received the translation.

She tried to call Reid but she heard a vibration behind her and spun to see he'd left his phone behind, still plugged into the wall. "Oh God . . ."

Staring at the screen, she looked at the message overlaying the video:

01000100  
01101001  
01100100  
00100000  
01111001  
01101111  
01110101  
00100000  
01110100  
01101000  
01101001  
01101110  
01101011  
00100000  
01001001  
00100000  
01110111  
01100001  
01110011  
00100000  
01100100  
01100101  
01100001  
01100100  
00101100  
00100000  
01000100  
01110010  
00101110  
00100000  
01010010  
01100101  
01101001  
01100100  
00111111  
00001101  
00001010  
00101101  
01010100  
00101110  
00100000  
01001000  
00101110

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	3. Hell and the Supernatural

**Chapter Three**

**Do you not believe in hell and the supernatural?**

He was three steps out of his apartment when he realized he hadn't taken his phone. He didn't go back; just the thought seemed to be taking time away from getting to JJ and Henry. Breaking out in a full-speed run, Spencer slammed against the steel staircase door and descended the steps four at a time, his long legs bounding forward as he allowed gravity to pull him down. Hitting the small lobby of his building then racing out onto the warmth of a late August night he spied Garcia's orange vintage Caddy convertible that had driven them from Quantico to the heart of D.C. It took up the parking space of two modern cars. His own modest blue Volvo was down in the underground parking garage of his building and only saw the light of day on his few times off when he had no use for Union Station.

Dodging traffic as he zipped across the street, Spencer grabbed the door of the car and using his momentum, leapt over the side and landed hard in the driver's seat. Slamming the key into the ignition, the engine turned over with an eight-cylinder growl and he spun the car out onto the street heading full speed to North Springfield, Virginia.

* * *

"Say that again?" Derek asked, jumping onto his bike from outside a bar in downtown D.C.

"_Did you think I was dead, Dr. Reid?_ Signed _T. H_."

"Garcia," Hotch said from another end of the conference call. He had been in his office at Quantico finishing up his work when Garcia's call came in. Moving quickly to the parking garage he jumped into a bureau Suburban. "That's not possible."

"That's what the message was. Binary doesn't lie. And this is him," she said, trying to find the hub for the signal so she could locate his satellite but she was being rerouted to a dozen IP addresses ranging from Sri Lanka to Cozumel. "All his idiosyncratic crazy self!" She screamed in frustration wishing she had access to her system at work. "—and the video and the telling Reid to choose—"

Emily turned off the water for the bath she was drawing and popped her bare feet into a pair of sneakers. "Tobias Hankel is dead. It's gotta be a copycat."

Garcia felt like pounding her keyboard as she watched JJ drive straight into the arms of who knew what. "None of the files were ever made public: there was no trial due to, you know, the serial killer being _dead_ and all. So unless our copycat is fellow FBI—"

"I've read Hankel's file," Rossi said as he threw on a pair of sweat pants, grabbed his credentials and gun and made it out of his home. "That message and the nature of this set up is pure narcissism. Neither Hankel nor his personalities were driven by ego. Whoever decided to emulate him is doing a piss poor job of it."

"Garcia," Derek called out to her over the flurry of voices in his headset as he pulled on his helmet and revved his engine. "Where's Reid now?"

She glanced at Reid's phone still across from her. "I don't know. He took my car and he's on his way to JJ's."

Morgan gave it gas and took off, zipping between cars and darting through red lights. "I'm in the middle of D.C. and all I see is traffic."

"Whoever he is, he's doing this to taunt Reid," Emily said mid-run and skirting over the hood of her car, landing on the driver's side.

"JJ's the bait," Rossi agreed, spinning his car out of his driveway.

"He's already figured that out," Hotch said, his emergency lights swirling in the darkness. "The message was sent to him. It told him to choose. Reid knows he's headed into a trap."

* * *

"Here we go my little man," JJ said, pulling her key from her ignition and turning to look at the half-sleeping baby. "Ohh," she dropped her voice to a whisper. "Bed time." Stepping out of her car and into the driveway of her small home, JJ collected Henry from his car seat and walked up the slate side path to her porch. Kissing his forehead, she stepped inside the dark home and closed the door behind her.

"Fornicator."

JJ nearly jumped out of her skin as her hand slapped on the foyer light. The whispered voice, which had sounded so close to her ear, that she had been sure had breathed down her neck, had no source as all around her was empty. Reaching behind her to open the door she turned the knob but no matter how much she pulled it wouldn't move. With her back against the door, she held Henry near and brought her phone up to her ear but it didn't light or respond.

"It's a sin to bring a bastard child into this world."

She jumped at the voice again, feeling the warmth of breath along the skin of her throat.

"Jude one, verse seven decrees that: _'even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.'_ Are you ready for the fire, Agent Jareau?"

JJ reached into her holster and pulled her weapon only to have it torn from her fingers by nothing at all and sent flying from her hand a second later. The Glock 26 went skittering across her floor and out of her sight into an adjoining room. She stood dazed for just a split moment, not understanding what had just happened.

"First Corinthians, seven verse eight and nine says: _'Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.'_" The sound of creaking metal was heard just as the lights flickered and died. "Couldn't you control yourself, Agent Jareau?" There was a loud crash just near her and she jolted, quickly backing away from the sound, wet drops flashing off the ground and hitting her pants. "Were you burning with passion?"

The smell radiating from her hardwood floor was too familiar.

_Gasoline_.

"I'll ask you again, Agent Jareau . . ." a match was struck and a light hovered in the distance illuminating a pair of milky white eyes. "Are you ready for the fire?"

JJ ran. Feet pounding the floor she launched away from the growing puddle flooding her doorway and she had one foot on the first step of her staircase when light and heat and hungry flames exploded to life all around her. Gripping Henry securely to her chest she took to the stairs like hurdles and she managed to launch herself up and away from the flames as they blew out behind her, swallowing all the air around and devouring the stairs in their path.

Henry was in the middle of a full wail as JJ struggled to her feet and dodged into his nursery.

* * *

The caddy was barely at a full stop behind JJ's car before Spencer vaulted out of it. _Flames_. The entire first floor of JJ's house was in flames. Something like a pit opened up in his stomach and a cold sweat rushed over him as his eyes quickly scanned over every window.

"JJ!" He shouted, seeing her just above the porch behind the window that led to Henry's nursery. She was banging on the glass and screaming but there was no sound save for the rush of wind that howled past him. Running to the simple white columns that supported the portico, Spencer jumped up onto the railing and grabbed a hold of the roof. Pulling himself up he planted his feet on the dark shingles and went to the window. JJ's eyes looked desperate and frantic. Spencer swallowed hard and motioned her away from the window as he used his foot and gave the glass a swift and hard kick, shattering it. Using the edges of the soles of his Chuck Taylor's he cleared away as much of the glass from the frame and reached into the room to pull her out.

"Reid!" He heard Morgan's voice shouting to him from the driveway.

"I've got her!" He shouted back.

"Take Henry," JJ said, pushing the child into Reid's arms. The second Henry was in his hands, JJ was drawn back into the room and slammed against the wall by an invisible force.

"JJ!" Reid screamed.

"Get Henry out of here!" She cried, completely unable to move.

Reid spun around on the porch roof, "Morgan!" he shouted, just as he saw Derek bound up the stairs and spring onto the railing ready to join him on the roof. "Take the baby," he said, passing Henry to Morgan.

"Where's JJ?" Derek demanded, holding the child in his arms.

"I'm gonna go get her," Spencer said, turning and climbing into the nursery.

"Reid!" He heard Derek call out from behind him but he was already halfway across the room.

"Spence," JJ said, her voice trembling. "I can't move. I don't know what's happening." She could see his face and the million thoughts passing behind his eyes as his mind tried to make sense of what he'd seen and what he was now witnessing. Reaching his hands around her he tried to pull her from the wall but she wasn't moving. Smoke was pouring in from under the door. If he couldn't get her unpinned—

"_Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me_," called a loud voice from just beyond the passage. Spencer's attention was immediately drawn to it.

"That's him," JJ breathed.

The voice continued, "Ruth one, verse seventeen."

Spencer ignored the man on the other side of the door and locked his eyes onto JJ's, "On the count of three, okay? Push as hard as you can." She nodded. "One. Two. Thr—"

JJ screamed as something at the core of her body felt latched onto as if a hook had bored into her. Feeling a pressure inside of her she felt the wall scraping against her back as her feet rose off the ground.

"No, no, no!" Spencer cried as he tried to grab onto her, not believing his eyes. His mother's words from over a decade ago resonated in his mind and long held beliefs and disbeliefs began to shatter before him.

_Spencer . . . I'm not crazy._

She'd taught him the prayer, she'd forced him to recite it every night to keep away the dark figures that lurked in her mind and he would repeat them ad infinitum waiting for the day he could be free of her paranoia, her dreams, her demons which to Diana Reid had been so real.

But they hadn't been. They couldn't be.

JJ screamed.

They _were_.

There was only one way this story would end and it would be in the same way the other had: blood from the ceiling and gnashing flames. Motherless child and a father searching for answers.

Not JJ.

No—

"_Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde, in nomine Dei_—" He coughed, the smoke starting to burn his throat.

_I exorcise thee, every unclean spirit, in the name of God_

Her focus had been medieval literature. She had never told him why of all subjects she would choose that when her own personal passions lay in the Victorian and Edwardian. She would only tell him she had to.

She had to.

He had to.

"_Patris omnipotentis, et in noimine Jesu_—" The man on the other side of the door screamed and JJ faltered on her climb up the wall.

_The Father Almighty, and in the name of Jesus_

Spencer's voice rose as he choked through the smoke, "_Christi Filii ejus, Domini et Judicis nostri, et in virtute Spiritus_—"

_Christ, His Son, our Lord and Judge, and in the power of the Holy Spirit_

JJ toppled bonelessly onto the floor and he ran to her, scooping her up into his arms and racing her to the window.

"JJ!" Emily was rushing to them across the shingles, her arms braced open as he pushed a barely conscious JJ feet first through the window. Emily latched onto her and held her, bringing her over to the edge of the roof.

Spencer had one foot on the window frame and two hands to the side, ready to pull himself out when the nursery door behind him exploded in a hail of flame and splintered wood. Time felt as if it slowed down to the motion within a vacuum. Pushing himself up and partway through the window, away from the pouring smoke into the fresh air, the blaze surging behind him, the flow suddenly reversed, like the house itself were inhaling and all the smoke and ash and broken bits of wood and masonry were being pulled back into the heart of the beast. Spencer was head and shoulders into the night air when something strong and unseen twined its way around his middle and yanked him back through the nursery like the recoil of a cracking whip.

"Reid!" Emily screamed, watching him disappear before her eyes into a wall of fire.

* * *

Concentric tiling of white and blue. Lightly glazed. Needed grout repair. His mouth hurt.

He groaned, tasting the slice his teeth made in his cheek before he felt it as blood slid over his tongue and down to his lips before smearing JJ's bathroom floor. He was dazed but he hadn't lost any time having been fully aware of every moment from when he was pulled from his escape to when he was tossed unceremoniously onto the tile.

Fingers laced into his hair and clenched a fist. Getting pulled up by the head, Spencer blinked once and then twice to clear his vision before his hands darted to the grip on him. He was drawn up to standing, facing the mirrored cabinet and Spencer saw, through the faint smoke that was curling along the ceiling, a pair of icy-white almost dead eyes. The figure behind them was a man he'd never seen in his entire life.

"You think I'm gonna tuck my tail between my legs and run?" He demanded.

With a roar-like cry, the man thrust down and forward, set on smashing Reid's face into the edge of the sink when Spencer quickly raised his knee and that, instead of his head, hit the porcelain. With a quick shove he pushed back against the sink and he sent himself and the man latched onto him flying backwards. Legs clipping against the edge of the tub, the man and Reid fell back against the shower wall, a crack of skull on tile reverberating through the tiny space.

The fingers holding him went limp and Spencer rolled off the man, scurrying across the blood covered floor and staring with wide eyes as the man rose from the tub as if being pulled completely upright by marionette strings. On hands and knees, Reid scrambled out of the bathroom and was welcomed by a complete void of air as heat and flame surged up the staircase and around the mouth of the corridor. Moving back towards Henry's nursery he felt something latch onto his foot and twist him up and sending spinning to the ceiling in about a foot of acrid smoke. His back hit the plaster and through burning eyes he could see the form of the man below him casually walk out from the bathroom and stare up to him.

"You're about to die, Dr. Reid. Confess your sins."

Wheezing, Reid choked out, "_Sancti, ut descedas ab hoc plasmate Dei_—"

_That thou depart from this creature of God_

The man's body twisted unnaturally as if there were no logic to his bones and he let out a harsh wail. The grip that held Spencer to the ceiling released and he went crashing to the hall floor. He gasped, his lungs seeking out the clearer air that passed at ankle level.

"_Quod Dominus noster ad templum sanctum suum vocare dignatus est_—"

_Which our Lord hath designed to call unto His holy temple_

A sound like a teakettle began to sing from the man's throat and it pitched higher and higher. Grasping his ears as the sound became deafening, Reid screamed out—"_ut fiat templum Dei vivi, et Spiritus Sanctus habitet in eo. Per eumdem Christum Dominum nostrum_—"

_That it may be made the temple of the living God, and that the Holy Spirit may dwell therein. Through the same Christ our Lord_

The vases in JJ's hallway split apart, glass exploding all around them. The glass in frames cracked and Spencer could feel the pressure of blood pushing against the palms of his hands from his ears.

Everything suddenly became very quiet and he spun with dizziness.

The man's head snapped up, his back arched like a wild animal and his hands splayed at his sides as if he were brandishing claws. There was an absolutely feral look to his colorless eyes. He was framed from behind by a raging blockade of orange, yellow, red and bright white flame with a ceiling of the blackest smoke and pure radiating heat. He was blocking the door to the nursery.

Spencer rolled back, moving himself to crouch on the balls of his feet, his elbow covering his nose and mouth, his eyes streaming smoke-irritated tears.

And still, there was no sound.

He felt the breeze on his back just then. It was a soft thing, rising up on the back of his neck, the breeze feeding the fire. He remembered the window there. There was no portico, there was no landing. It was just a small thing that ended the hallway and let in light during the day but it was his only chance.

And the thing that looked like a man standing in front of him knew it.

Reid choked out, "_qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos_—" just quickly enough to send another wave of pain through the creature before Spencer spun and ran.

_Who shall come to judge the living and the dead_

Four steps. Three steps. Two—

Hands grabbed his shoulders and slammed his back into the wall. A fist went for his face when Reid dodged to the side and brought the heel of his hand up to the man's nose. Feeling the crunch of bone and a surge of blood fall from the face, Spencer used his other hand to send another blow to his throat. A knee came up and was driven into Reid's stomach, pushing the air from him. He doubled over and immediately felt a hard downward blow on his back. He was falling into the silent darkness when his hands reached forward and clasped onto the creature's legs, sending it tumbling down with him.

He wheezed, "_et saeculum per ignem_—" and watched as the creature was thrown into a shaking fit.

_And the world by fire_

Spencer crawled, his forearms struggling to carry him as they scratched across the broken shards of glass, over the remaining space. With shaking, bleeding fingers he barely touched the sash when he was gripped by his ankles and pulled. His nails dragged along the floor, gouging deep marks into the wood as he screamed—" _Ephpheta, quod est, Adaperire!_"

_Be opened!_

The creature reared back and wailed. Spencer took his chance and scrambled to a run. It was on his heels and there was nothing left for him to do. Raising his hands and guarding his face Spencer Reid crashed through that second floor hallway window and felt the whistling of air past his unhearing ears.

The ground met him with a crashing, cracking thud and he felt himself rolling down the soft embankment to the side of the house. Coming to a stop he coughed, gasping for air. He felt sick and dizzy as the dark sky blurred with fading stars. The world tipped and wavered and tamago yaki burned the back of his throat as it crawled its way up. Something slicked from his brow and began to drain into the hollow of his eye. Turning his head slightly to the side and bringing uncoordinated hands to his face he felt the slick of blood on his fingers and had to turn even more to the side to prevent it from pooling over his eyes. He was shaking. He was shaking all over and he felt too cold for a man who'd just escaped an inferno and landed in the middle of an August evening.

The stars were disappearing now, erasing from existence as his eyes crossed and his lids heavily drooped when white eyes stared down on him from above, the dark figure straddling him. His body tensed and he tried to push away but his limbs moved without direction and with even less strength. The lips were moving but Spencer could still only feel the breeze on his ears. The night remained absolutely silent.

He felt tightness around his chest and a heavy squeezing pressure. He was choking. He couldn't catch his breath. The corners of his vision began to fade and he felt like he was falling when the world rushed back to him, the body over him shaking with solid jolts. Blood was dripping from the dark clothes and falling onto Reid's dress shirt. The creature smiled and glanced over its shoulder. Spencer wearily followed its line of sight to see both Morgan and Hotch with their guns drawn as they unloaded their clips into it. Reid could read the almost panic and confusion in their faces as the creature smiled at them, not registering any sign of pain.

"_Tu autem effugare, diabole_—" he exhaled.

_And to you, O devil, begone_

The creature spun back to him, its hand wrapping around his throat but it was too late as Reid ground out, "_appropinquabit enim judicium Dei_."

_For the judgment of God is at hand._

The creature arched back and from its mouth exploded a torrent of black swirling smoke that swept up onto the sky like a tornado. Spencer watched it rise and rise until it touched the absolute limits of the atmosphere and joined the dissolving and dying stars.

Sound finally came back to him a moment before it completely faded and in that moment he could hear the crying of his name.

* * *

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._**  
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	4. One-way Conversations

**Chapter Four**

**One-way conversations**

He was aware of the commotion bustling around him but his thoughts weren't connecting from cause to effect. All he knew was his head hurt and he felt sick. He was in motion but he didn't know if he was moving or if something was moving him.

A light burned his eyes.

"How long's he been out?" The EMT asked as Reid was lifted on a backboard and moved towards the ambulance.

Aaron checked his watch, the radiance from JJ's still burning house and the glare of emergency services vehicles flood-lights filling the small neighborhood. People were out on their porches and circling the scene. Firemen rushed past them as hoses were hooked onto hydrants and JJ's front door was kicked in.

"Seven, eight minutes at the most," he said, his gaze looking ahead to the other ambulance and seeing JJ, soot covered and pale, sitting upright on a stretcher, Henry held tightly in her arms. An oxygen mask was covering her nose and mouth and she was visibly trembling, her eyes watching Spencer, Emily next to her with a hand on her shoulder.

"He's coming out of it," the EMT said to his partner as Reid was loaded in the back of the vehicle.

"Dr. Reid," a different voice called out to him as a mask was placed on his face. "Can you hear me?" Spencer blinked and gestured with his hand that her words were being understood. "How many fingers am I holding up?" He repeated her gesture with a peace sign.

"I'm riding," Morgan said, usurping Hotch before he had a chance to make the same declaration. "Baby Girl?" Derek said into his headset as the ambulance doors closed.

Penelope Garcia, who had front row tickets to the big fiery show, was frantically directing the containment team around Reid's apartment as it was swept for every single digital trace there ever existed. A team of six well-trained agents and technicians were going through every electrical connection, looking behind every picture frame and working on a remote back-trace from Reid's computer to whatever the source of the signal was as Garcia packed her things and rummaged Reid's closet for a change of clothes.

"Der, tell me he's okay," she hurriedly said, digging past a box of Halloween knickknacks and a steamer trunk of magic tricks. She almost flinched when she saw what she thought was a real rabbit. If Reid's Go bag wasn't living in the office, it would have made her life so much easier as Reid's closets seemed to have a strange cataloguing system where everything had it's place and it wasn't by type of clothes or color but much more Dewey Decimal than Library of Congress. "Where the hell are your PJ's!" She screamed in frustration. The entire apartment-full of agents turned to gape at her. "Seriously?" They quickly turned back to their tasks.

"We just got in the bus but he's responding—"

Spencer's eyes rolled to Derek and he mumbled under the mask, "It looks worse than it feels."

Derek grinned, "That's the lack of oxygen to the brain talking." Something inside of him shook away a pensive fear he'd felt since rolling the body off of Reid and seeing him laying there in the grass, covered in blood. Solemnly he added, "Besides, it looks pretty bad."

Giving Derek a trembling thumbs-up, he wheezed, "You should see the other guy."

"Yeah, Garcia," Morgan said with a roll of his eyes as he scrubbed his face with his hands. "Kid's fine."

* * *

"You call this _fine_?" Spencer asked in the middle of a dry heave, a nasal cannula that was feeding him oxygen was looped behind his ears. He was off to a corner of the Fairfax Inova Hospital's emergency room and bent over a large empty plastic container. It was his third. The others were taken away not half so empty. He felt like he was bringing up things he'd eaten since he was twelve. His head was pounding and it felt heavy on his neck and shoulders; his vision was unfocused and every time he dared to even take a sip of water his gag reflex kicked in.

His response was in reply to Dave's comment, said with an air of relief, that Reid looked better than he expected after the doctors had cleaned and patched him up. Final diagnosis was a concussion, sprained ankle and some pretty self evident cuts and bruises. His fingers and forearms looked like they belonged in an Egyptian tomb exhibit.

Rossi shrugged, "In my book, _fine_ covers a hell of a lot."

"Amputation or paralysis can't be the only criterion applicable for not being fi—" he heaved again and this time it wasn't so dry.

Rossi patted his back, murmuring. "Reminds me of college."

Spencer only groaned, looking and feeling like a drowned rat.

* * *

"How is he?" Emily asked walking up behind JJ as Henry got a thorough check-over in the pediatric emergency room of Fairfax hospital.

JJ, who was seated a little ways away from the crib as the doctor and nurse did a checklist of tests on him, held a mask to her face and was bent forward, her eyes never leaving him. A few bandages and a sonogram clearing her worries about the pain that still lingered in her core were all she would allow before she told them she was _going_ to be with her baby.

"A little bumped and scared but I'm watching them and they don't seem—"

"Yeah. Panicked. That's a good sign," Emily agreed.

"How's Spence?"

"He's fine. _Technically_. Right now he's reenacting the pea soup scene from the Exorcist."

"Concussion?"

"Yep, and we can reference H. G. Wells or The Mummy with all the gauze they put on him."

JJ combed her hair back and felt that for the hundredth time that night she would dissolve into tears. She felt Emily's arm around her and she did finally let some of it out.

"You'll be okay, Henry will be okay and Reid is fine," Emily said, trying to comfort her but she knew no matter what she managed to say, it would be hollow. JJ had almost lost her life, her little boy was lying in the hospital and her best friend was downstairs in the Emergency Room. And her house . . .

"Jayj," Emily said in her ear as she watched a familiar figure zip past the glass that divided the room from the hallway.

Looking up, JJ caught her line of sight and barely made it to standing before William LaMontagne Jr. scooped her up in his arms.

* * *

"And I didn't know what would be most comfortable so I brought the PJ's, the sweats and the basketball shorts—you play basketball?" Garcia asked, speaking faster than his tired brain could really grasp.

"Badly and only when Morgan makes me," Spencer said as he was unwillingly rolled by wheelchair to an empty hospital room.

"I'd still like to see it," she smiled, whipping out a pair of boxers, "These looked newest."

Spencer snatched them from her as his face turned the color of borscht. "Garcia!"

The orderly wheeling him into the room chuckled quietly to himself and helped Reid into a sitting position on the bed, a nurse behind them.

"No use getting all red. Whatever your embarrassment squick, someone's gonna have to help you in them. It's Em, me or the nurse." Spencer looked to the nurse who was about 6'5", 230lbs and looked like he'd been ex-Special Ops.

"Um . . ." Spencer said with an audible gulp, wishing like all decent multiple choice exams, D) None of the Above was an option.

"Yuh huh," she said with a triumphant grin. Giving Garcia a quick tutorial on how to navigate the cannula and the oxygen connections, gesturing to the pair of crutches he'd set down against the wall, the nurse pointed to the small bathroom that was just off to the side of the room before he and the orderly left.

"You really don't have to, I can—"

She held up her hand quieting his protests, "Your noggin got more banged than a steel piñata and you smell like a Fourth of July barbeque pit. _I'm. Gonna. Help. You_."

He was partially afraid what she'd do if he refused again. "Compromise?" He offered.

She set her face into a neutral expression. "I'm listening."

"I'll keep the door cracked—"

"No-no—"

"Reverse the situation, Garcia," he said, pleading to her humanity. A wicked grin crossed her lips. He quickly added, "But I was Hotch." The grin became a gag. She tossed his clothes to him like they were covered in hot battery acid.

"God, now I have images of _Flowers in the Attic_."

Moving up to begin his sojourn to the bathroom, Reid asked, "Did you bring my phone?" He ached all over and he eyed the crutches with a high level of malcontent. He hated crutches.

"Oh," she dug into her pocket and produced it. "Wait, who are you calling in the shower?"

"Does it really matter?" He asked, closing the air flow and slipping the tube from his face.

Narrowing her eyes on him she hummed. "Come on." Supporting him with both hands and with one of the crutches under his arm, Penelope helped him into the bathroom and hovered.

"You're hovering."

"Of course I'm hovering. Just about every bone in my body is a maternal one and you look like that and you just went through all of this and now you're saying I can't even hover a little?"

Hobbling, he waved her out of the room saying, "Garcia, I'd like to get my 10-year ring next October with the knowledge that none of my co-workers know what I look like naked," and with that, he closed the door.

"You promised you'd leave it cracked!" She called out.

"I lied!" He called back. Leaning heavily on the wall he let out a long held sigh. Looking down to the phone in his hand he knew who he needed to call.

* * *

Derek Morgan didn't believe in . . . _hell_, whatever it was he saw was definitely on the list of things he didn't believe in but the facts remained that he saw it. Standing outside to the corner of the ambulance bay, he and Hotch were in relative silence as the night's excitement calmed down. The unsub was stopped, the fire was out, techs were scanning both Reid's apartment and JJ's car so that the reports would have all the t's crossed and the i's dotted but that wasn't what was going through their minds.

Aaron Hotchner didn't believe in . . . _hell_, whatever it was he saw was definitely on the list of things he didn't believe in but the fact remained that he saw it.

"I'd be inclined to think one of us was hallucinating but not both," he said, his arms crossed over his chest.

"But they do happen. Rarely."

"They're usually a product of the subconscious and what the mind logically anticipates to see in a given shared event."

Derek nodded, "Yeah, I wasn't expecting to see the unsub choke out a black tornado."

"Neither was I."

"Do you think Reid saw it too?"

"I think with his head injury we can't trust what he did or didn't see."

"Yeah, but Hotch, come on. If he says he saw the unsub spitting out a vortex, I don't think we can chalk that up to the concussion."

Aaron pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes and tensed his shoulders. This wasn't making sense. This was beyond the realm of ever possibly making sense.

Leaning against the wall Derek knew the reality of the night would eventually hit him but in the meantime he simply exhaled, "I need a drink."

With his hands still to his face, Hotch groaned, "Agreed."

* * *

"I'm calling to say I'm sorry," Reid quietly said, the water in the shower on full-blast as he stood just outside with his phone to his ear. "I saw one tonight," a flash of the unnaturally twisting spine and white eyes passed before his vision. "It came after me. You were right, about all of it. I—" he wasn't sure how to clarify what he was saying. "I got it out but it's still out there. I just need you to call me back as soon as you can, okay?" He ended the call, the message recorded. Setting his phone to ring, he placed it on the edge of the sink and he hobbled to the shower. How he would manage to keep his bandages dry, he had no idea, but imagining a sponge bath from Garcia strengthened his resolve.

* * *

JJ and Will sat arm in arm, the room lights dimmed as they watched Henry sleep. She'd wanted to erase everything from her mind about that night but the eyes kept coming back to her, haunting her. The voice, the invisible power that was so real she would touch her stomach every so often to make sure it wasn't bleeding.

Glancing to Will, his focus and concentration glued to the baby, JJ wanted to melt into him and stay there forever but she needed to clear her head. She needed answers she knew she would never get unless she asked the right questions the right way. If she'd imagined everything that was fine but it would have to be a nightmare she kept to herself if she wanted to keep her badge. The only person she could bring it up with would be Reid.

"Baby, I've gotta check on Spence—" JJ said, looking up to him from the crook of his arm.

"'Course," he said, rubbing her shoulder as if he could feel how cold she felt and he was trying to warm her. Will knew he'd have to find some way of thanking Spencer for saving JJ and Henry. He'd have to ask Derek 'cause the kid was a mystery to him.

Standing, JJ kissed Henry before she exited the room.

* * *

Emily and Rossi were in the hospital cafeteria trying to make out the exact origin of their hamburgers.

"Ten bucks says it's Soylent Green," she said, poking the meat with her spork.

"Twenty says this is what they do when the morgue is SRO," he said wondering if the bun was toasted or just hard in general.

"That's what I just said," she muttered.

"Yeah, but you sugarcoated it."

* * *

"Look who got j.e.l.l.o." Garcia said, pronouncing every letter as Reid emerged from the shower in a combination of sweatpants, a t-shirt and a flannel pajama top. The sweats were the only thing that fit over his ankle brace. "Derek said you had a hospital-food preference so I flashed my badge and they sent in a Pride-flag full of choices." Spencer looked to the rolling table and saw five cups of Jell-o. He was starving and he knew the feeling was probably completely honest as he had no food left in his body but images of plastic buckets filled with half-digested Jell-o made him cringe.

"Maybe eating isn't the best idea when all it'll do is come back up?" He offered. His stomach then made a weak, kittenish sound and his cheeks went instantly warm.

"Yuh huh, hun, that would be your insides telling your outsides that you need to sit your ass down and eat," she said with a wide smile. With a double-tap on the table with her perfectly manicured red with green zebra stripe nails, she urged him over.

Wobbling with an unsteady gait, Spencer went to the bed and sat down. Garcia readjusted the cannula on his face and turned on the oxygen.

"Red, green, purple, orange and blue," she said, naming off the colors in lieu of flavors. "Someone is _very_ lucky." She reached over to the side and whipped out a familiar plastic bucket. "50/50 chance it'll stay in. Here we go if it doesn't."

He tugged the basin from her and glumly stared at the Jell-o as if it was a chess move set to him from Bobby Fischer.

"Spence?" They looked up to the room door where JJ stood in the threshold.

"Hey JJ," Spencer said, sitting up and putting the basin on the table and pushing it away from him.

Garcia looked from him to her and nodded, "I'm gonna go check on my little man again." Passing by JJ she extended her hand to her shoulder and whispered with an air of conspiracy, "Make him eat the Jell-o."

"Um, okay."

"And no sleeping," she warned as she turned and headed down the hall.

JJ approached Spencer. "How you feeling?"

"Better," he said with a quirked smile. Of everyone worrying about him, JJ was the one he was worrying the most about. "You?"

"Hoping my insurance covers _arson by psychopath_," she said, easing into the chair next to him. They both knew what the topic they really wanted to cover was but there was no real way to brooch it. If either said the wrong thing it would color the entire conversation. "Um," JJ began. "My stomach—"

"Are you okay?" Spencer asked with a sudden flare of fright.

Waving her hand over her midsection she said, "It's like it's still there, just dull." She looked down. "I'm trying to make sense of _why_ it hurts."

"You don't remember?" He asked, almost hopefully. In that tone, JJ knew she hadn't imagined it. She also figured that Spencer was in the same boat she was: hoping he wasn't insane.

She treaded carefully, "I remember being pulled back and being pinned to the wall. I remember my feet leaving the ground." These were all details that didn't necessarily have to involve whoever or, more importantly, _whatever_, the unsub was. She took a deep breath before saying, "I don't remember the unsub being in the room."

He knew he had to make a choice. How much was safe to tell her? Remembering his own reaction to the truth over a decade earlier he knew what he had to let through and what to definitely obscure. Plausible deniability was the key to every conversation he would have on the subject from then on.

"The unsub wasn't in the room," he said. It was his first admission which was promptly obscured with, "I can't believe what I saw. I'm still not sure what exactly it was that I did see."

JJ's eyes went wide as she gripped onto that solid confirmation. "Spence, what was that? It wasn't . . ." She bit her lip, self-preservation tying her tongue before she went too far.

"Human," he admitted. "I don't see any other logical explanation for it. _When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth_. Sherlock Holmes."

Vindication washing over her, a new feeling swept through as fear filled her. "What was he?" She asked, speaking about the unsub in the past tense. That's right, he thought. She would think he was dead.

And with the biggest lie he'd ever told he said, "I have no idea."

The Doctor Who theme song filled the room and Spencer quickly moved to the side table to grab his phone, staring at the familiar number. He looked to JJ and said, "I have to take this."

"Sure," she said with a nod, needing to clear her head as well. Exiting the room she pointed to the table, "Eat the Jell-o or Garcia won't let me live it down."

"Okay," he said. Watching her disappear from view, Spencer answered the phone. "Hey—"

"Where are you?" The annoyed voice cut in from the other end of the line

"Fairfax Hospital."

"Boy, do you have any idea how many _Fairfax Hospitals_ there are in the continental United States? Maybe if I put my choices in a hat and pick blindfolded I'll get lucky."

Spencer pinched his lips together before he said, "Virginia."

"Alright. You're damn lucky I'm just getting off a job in Charleston or I'd leave your scrawny ass hanging in the wind 'til morning." The gruffness in the voice ebbed just a little when he was asked, "Hospital for what?"

"Jumping out of a burning house from the second floor."

"Mmmhmm." Was all the voice said in response as if it were everyday. "How bad?"

"Concussion. I'll be out in the morning."

"I'll be there before mornin'. I'll need somethin' to tell your people when I get there. Can't really do my usual thing with real Feds there."

Spencer cringed, memories coming back to him and how he reacted when he found the stash of IDs in the kitchen drawer.

"Tell them you're family—"

"Boy, you've been shot, kidnapped, anthraxed and 'cause you got a bump on your head, _now_ I'm coming' to visit?"

Spencer sighed. There had only ever been one person in the whole world who could put his intelligence in perspective and leave him feeling like the one kid in class who disproved the saying that there weren't any stupid questions, only stupid answers. "Yeah, well, my dad never visited those times either so you've got precedent."

The line was quiet for a while.

"You goddamn kids and your goddamn daddy issues. And my goddamn fool self for always falling right into it."

Spencer grinned but said nothing.

"And your momma?"

Spencer's grin faded. "I . . ." It had been the topic burning his brain right behind having a demon try and kill him. His mother had been telling him the truth but it was clear she was still sick.

"This life will do it to the best of us," the voice said, hearing Spencer's hesitation. "But if it went after you it'll go after her—"

Instant panic flooded inside of him. He hadn't ever considered the possibility. "I have to get her. I have to get her out of Bennington—"

"You ain't going anywhere. I'll make a call."

"What?" Panic was still throbbing in his chest. "What kind of call?"

"A call to a friend in a high place. She'll be fine."

"But—"

"Boy, worry about yourself 'cause I'm five hours out and in the meantime you've got a bull's-eye on your back. How exactly would your Fed friends take it if you started drawing Devil's Traps all over that hospital room of yours?"

The thought was starting to make him feel sick again. He was a target who really had no way of protecting himself.

"By your silence I'll take your answer as a _'not fucking well.' _Just, don't fall asleep."

"Okay."

The voice got suddenly irritated through vindication, "And _next_ time I tell you something of _ultimate_ goddamn importance, _don't_ backtalk me."

Without saying a word, Spencer just exhaled in a full deflate.

"Get your Bible—"

"I don't have—"

He could almost hear the eye roll under the exasperation, "Side drawer, Gideon Bible."

It was right there. He felt awkward with it in his hands. He'd grown up indifferent to the words it contained, his mother's pressure pushing him in the opposite direction of faith and now he had to cling to it to save his life. He felt like a hypocrite.

"But I have it memor—" he began, instantly regretting it when another impatient sigh sounded over the line.

"Got a cross in your room?" Silence. "Star of David?" Silence. "Ankh, pentacle, the Watchtower fucking Magazine?"

"No," Spencer finally said.

"Then how about you keep your _one_ totem close by and stop acting like such a goddamn idjit!" Bobby Singer slammed his phone closed and pressed the gas.

* * *

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._**  
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	5. The Angel's Apprentice

**Chapter Five**

**The angel's apprentice**

"I'll call you when we have a location," the angel said before hanging up the phone. It was just after six p.m. and the sky still held the fading brilliance of the summer sun as it wound down through the darkening evening. From out into the distance, just before the limits of the horizon, the multi-colored neon lights of the Las Vegas strip could be seen. The building they stood before was in such stark contrast to that far-off—

"What was it you called it?" His apprentice asked with a teasing smile.

"A den of sin," the angel repeated, his voice deep and his tone flat.

The apprentice looked away with a poorly-hidden chuckle. The angel grumbled and wished his ward was less what he had been and more of what he was now. It would at least give him a proper protocol toolkit to follow. As it was, he was a strange mixture of the imperfect and the divine that was left to him to guide for what reasons he didn't know. What he did know was that in all his years, not one of his novices had ever been at once so close to him and still so diametrically different.

"Pay attention," was all the angel had to say and the young one nodded, the remnants of the smile easing away into a small amused grin.

"Why does he want us here anyway?" He asked, looking up to the building. Something about the name resonated inside of him but he couldn't quite recall what it was. Certain memories of his life before his ascension were clouded behind locked walls of impenetrable memory he would have to manually open. Sight or direct contact was one way the doors opened. Conversation with certain triggers was another. Almost all of his previous life had been opened but certain things were still missing.

"Protection," the angel replied, walking towards the entrance, his apprentice at his side. Just before they reached the glass doors, they disappeared.

* * *

Dean Winchester was dead. He died along with seven other people two and a half years prior in Monument, Colorado. A gas main was ruptured and a police station was swallowed in a ball of fire.

He looked down at his driver's license as he slipped another photo of Lisa and Ben into his wallet. With a smile he realized almost all the plastic sheaths had been filled with those small candid portraits.

The gas explosion had been the official version of the story. Nothing was told about a demon siege and a possessed, homicidal child with white eyes. Nothing was said about the Winchester brothers in the public arena but to the Federal government, Dean and Sam Winchester had died. Their lives gone, their records sealed and their social security numbers, however little they had been used were now defunct. With help from Castiel, even their fingerprints had been replaced with those of men who had died decades before the boys had ever been born.

Dean Winchester was dead but Dean Campbell closed his wallet and set it on the nightstand next to his bed. He was exhausted. Looking to the clock on the stand he saw it was just after nine. He almost had to chuckle to himself. He never thought there would ever come a day when he would be yearning for a full eight hours of sleep and actually face the prospect of getting it. He was three seconds from jumping in the shower to wash off the grease of the day and fall asleep through the entire weekend.

"Pops!" Came a small voice from the bedroom door.

"Hey, kid," Dean said as eleven-year-old Ben walked into the room with a PSP in his hands, half his attention up to Dean, the other determined to kill zombies. Dean spied the game and asked, "How you doing?"

"Level twenty," Ben said.

Dean raised his palm and said, "That's my man." Ben gave him the high-five just before hitting the pause button and smiling up to Dean with a mouthful of braces. Dean was doing double shifts at Manny's Garage just to pay for those and damn it to all hell the kid better look like he had veneers at the end of it.

"Mom said Mrs. Ortiz had a . . . um, episode? And she's gonna be late."

Mrs. Ortiz was almost three hundred pounds and was paying Lisa for private Bikram yoga lessons. Of course she was gonna have an episode. This had been her fifth.

"Mrs. Ortiz doesn't need yoga, she needs a Stairmaster," Dean grumbled to himself. Ben quietly snickered as if he'd been thinking the same exact thing. "You eat?" He asked and the kid nodded.

"You left pizza money, remember?"

"Dude, that was for lunch. What'd you have for dinner?"

Ben shrugged, "More pizza."

Dean was determined not to have his kid have the same diet he had suffered through so he said, "Listen, I'm gonna get in the shower but you go pick out something you want and I'll—" his mouth moved but the word didn't come out. He tried again with minor success, "C-cook."

Ben's eyes went wide. "Dude, mom's gonna freak if it happens again."

"It's not gonna happen again," Dean said, using his hands to shoo Ben out of the bedroom. "Seriously, how was I supposed to know it would do that?"

"The hall still smells—" Ben said, standing in the corridor.

"The incense is working, isn't it?"

"Yea, but instead of burning rubber it smells like old lady burning rubber."

Dean closed the door on him and mumbled, "_Old lady burning rubber_." Grumbling toward the bathroom as he peeled off his clothes he said, "Who the hell knew spaghetti sauce could explode?"

* * *

"Did you eat it?" Penelope Garcia asked, her tone a perfect pitch of warning as she turned into the room from the hallway. Then she froze, taking in the image before her. Reid was sitting up in his bed, a plastic spoon dangling limply from the side of his mouth and his nose in a Bible.

"I, personally, have nothing against the Bible," she began in a rush of syllables, walking quickly towards him. "And I realize it's the only thing in here to read and all, but I'm a little freaked. Is it wrong to be freaked? I mean, after what you just went through I'd probably be reading the Bible too or even a Koran if it was close by . . . and in English. But, I mean, after what you said in your apartment about not having to reread things and here you are reading something I know you've already got locked away in that big brain of yours, I think I am a little freaked about what it might mean, like, are you forgetting stuff? Should I call the doctor?" Spencer looked up to her, his eyes wide at the overflow of speech, the spoon sliding to the other side of his mouth. Both of Garcia's hands went to the sides of his face and she looked intently into his eyes. "Can you understand why I'm freaking out here?"

He removed the spoon and only managed to say, "Most religious texts, like the Qur'an, are advised to be avoided in translation," before Garcia darted over him for the nurse's call button. "Garcia, I'm fine!" He said, entering a slap match with her before finally pulling the call button away from her.

"You're reading the Bible; how is that fine?-!" She demanded, lunging for the button again. He held it high over his head and to the other side of the bed.

"Well, that's not a right kind of question," he said, a smile breaking out over his lips.

Pausing her attack for the button her own words repeated in her head and her hands went immediately to her mouth. "Oh! I didn't mean that," she garbled through her fingers.

His smile was halfway turning to a laugh when the call button dropped from his fingers and he gulped, a sick, green color coming to his face. "Garcia?" He whispered.

"Huh?" She asked, still mortified.

"Could we avoid all that shaking next time?" He weakly asked before grabbing the plastic bucket from the table in front of him and welcoming back all his Jell-o.

* * *

The angel and his apprentice appeared in an open seating area. Several people were occupied in various activities such as reading and board games. Some were walking with others and some by themselves. Some sat all alone with distant looks on their faces. There was one woman in a far corner on a small couch with her legs demurely crossed as she sat back with a book to her nose. Her short blonde hair was neatly combed and her eyes were alert and moved leisurely over the page as if drinking in what she read.

A door to memory in the apprentice's mind opened and he recognized her. He knew her. It had been a few lifetimes ago but he knew her.

"She needs protection?" He asked, his previous easy care attitude gone now. "From what?"

"We're not sure yet."

"But, it's demonic, right? I mean, you wouldn't have brought me here if it wasn't."

The angel was always amused and likewise irritated by his self-assurance. "I can handle demons on my own. I brought you because you know her and we need her to trust us enough to come with us."

The apprentice seemed surprised. "How did you know I know her?"

Now the angel seemed surprised. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I haven't seen her in years and even back then we never really interacted all that much."

Looking into his ward's eyes the angel read something there in that open door of memory. He mumbled after a few moments, "You don't know."

"What don't I know?"

* * *

"Hey guys," Spencer said, rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes. His doctor had said he could sleep as long as he was woken on the hour but he knew he couldn't. He glanced to Garcia who was snoring in the small upholstered chair in the corner, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

Hotch and Derek hesitated at the doorway to the dimly lit room and resisted the urge to look to one another before entering. An hour of pure consternation and avoidance finally led them upstairs to speak to the one person who would either confirm or deny that what they had seen had been real.

Spencer saw the look in their faces the moment they stepped into the light and it wasn't just a preoccupation with whether or not he was alright. He expected this; that they'd come together as a pair. Given other, less otherworldly circumstances, Derek would have been the one in Garcia's chair.

"Hey, kid," Derek said, taking the seat next to the bed railing as Hotch opted to stand. "How you feeling?"

"Like I fell out of a burning building and landed on my head," Reid said with a crooked grin.

Derek pointed to his forehead and said, "Good thing it's so big then; cushioned your fall."

Spencer rolled his eyes, "And you're the one who's supposed to be teaching me how to tell a joke." Derek laughed.

Spencer looked up to Hotch, "You look tired."

"Sleep's not exactly a consideration right now," Hotch said in a mumble. "I'm glad you're alright though."

"Thanks, Hotch."

Looking to Garcia, Aaron frowned before turning back to Spencer. "Reid, I'm not exactly sure how to ask this question—"

He knew what he had to do and it was exactly what he did with JJ: lie with the right amount of truth. He could have denied whatever they were preparing to ask, but as soon as they cross-referenced the rest with JJ, who'd had firsthand knowledge of what happened in the house, he'd have even more questions to answer. He brought up the Bible that was off to the side on his body and held it close. As profilers, Spencer knew they would take note, file it and then in just a second—

Morgan looked to the book in Reid's hand. "Light reading before bed?" He asked with a forced casualness to his tone.

Spencer glanced down to it as if he hadn't realized it was there. "Oh, I just . . . I don't know, needed to . . ." he let his voice trail off, perfectly mimicking the visual signals that a person was in deep contemplative thought.

Morgan and Hotch finally glanced to each other.

"Kid, talk to me, come on."

"No, it's . . . it's just my imagination getting the better of me, I know it is. It's not important. I never fully appreciated the adverse affects of a concussion," he said this with his own air of forced casualness that sounded overly false and hesitant. He gave them both a weak smile.

"Did something . . ." Hotch began, wanting to ask the question without sounding like a madman. What could he ask? Reid had engaged in hand to hand combat with a man who withstood two full magazines of bullets. It would give anyone pause to clutch onto something familiar and conversely, larger than themselves. But still, this was Reid, the creature of logic. Reid, who had never found logic in religion beyond the common lessons of morality. For Reid to consider the Bible at this point when he'd seen and been through worse would mean there was something particular about what he'd seen that night that made the words on those pages suddenly real and logical.

Derek cut through the bullshit: "Kid, did you see what we saw or are we losing it?"

Spencer fought hard to keep the smile off his face. Instead he looked between Hotch and Morgan and frowned. "The human experience is colored by individual perception."

With a twirl of his finger, Derek said, "Black smoky tornado ringing any bells?"

Spencer closed his eyes and exhaled, "Part of me was hoping I'd imagined it."

Morgan and Hotch looked to each other reveling in the satisfaction of exoneration then sinking into the pit of actuality. It was real.

"What was it?" Hotch asked, more to himself than anyone else.

And now, to put them at ease. "Does it really matter?" Spencer asked with a small voice. They both looked at him, confused. "I mean to say, he's dead, isn't he?" It was the one point they hadn't considered. It, whatever it was, was dead.

"But what if there are more of them?" Hotch asked.

Spencer raised his eyebrows and quirked his lips to one side of his face, "It's a good thing then that he went down like all the other unsubs we've ever seen."

It was an ego stroke, he knew it, but it was all they needed. They worried over it just a few more moments before they drew their own conclusions from his words. They shot the unsub, the unsub died. Everything else was irrelevant.

"It's just a little disconcerting," he said, tightening his grip on the book. "To know how many faiths are built around the supernatural and something as simple and real as a bullet is all you really need? I'm trying to work through the contradiction. You know, I took a comparative religion course, well, _several_ of them because there's just _so_ many to compare, and I was surprised—"

"Kid, you know, you _can_ sleep," Derek began, hoping to halt the rush of verbalized thought. "We'll wake you."

"Oh no, you should probably go home, I'll be fine."

"You sure?"

"Really. If there's anyone you should be with right now it's JJ."

He was right. The amount of time they spent worrying about losing their minds versus seeing something that was akin to witnessing a UFO, they'd neglected beyond the initial checkup on her to see how JJ and Will and Henry were doing. Their house was in ashes.

"Reid, I'll debrief you in the morning," Hotch said, moving towards the door. "Try to get some rest but tell a nurse before you do."

"Okay."

"Over breakfast you can tell me if you find anything," Derek said, pointing to the book with a smile on his face. Spencer groaned at the idea of breakfast.

Leaving with less weighing down on them than they had entering the room, Hotch and Morgan disappeared beyond the doorway and Spencer let out the breath he'd been holding the entire time.

* * *

The fire alarm was ringing and Dean and Ben were waving their hands before their faces trying to fan away the acrid smoke. They looked to the running sink which held a very sad and blackened beef patty that was in the process of being doused. Ben opened the windows and Dean swung out the back door. Right above every entrance to the home was a small thread medallion that often got mistaken for dream catchers by the neighbors but they weren't _dream catchers_ so much as _bogey blockers_.

"How about KFC?" Dean asked, lighting a stick of incense.

Ben nodded vigorously, spraying out almost a full can of air freshener over the stove and sink.

"What the hell you guys?" Lisa said, standing in the open back doorway of her house.

Dean and Ben pointed to each other, "He did it."

To Dean she said, "Clean it up," and to Ben she said, "Help him clean it up."

"But I didn't do it—" Ben protested.

Lisa went to Dean and kissed his forehead before going to Ben and doing the same, "Yeah, you didn't stop him either." She sniffed the air and her nose curled, "Now it's gonna smell like burning rubbery old lady."

Dean pointed to the incense stick in his hand, "Hey, this is Myrrh; its good stuff."

"Uh huh," she said, leaving them to clean up as she went upstairs to take a shower. "I'll make something when I get out."

Waiting until he was sure she was gone, Dean exhaled the breath he'd been holding, "She took that well."

"This time it didn't look like that movie."

"Which one?"

"The one with the two girls," Ben said with a blush.

Dean racked the extensively categorized movie catalogue of his mind before it came to him like a light switching on. "The Shining?"

"_Here's Johnny_!" Ben quoted with flourish, grabbing a footstool and sidling up to Dean at the sink.

Dean looked to the walls that he'd spent the better part of three hours sponging down and admitted, "I guess it did look like the hallway from The Shining."

Washing the dishes as Ben dried, Dean reflected on his new domesticity. He enjoyed settling into a comfort he once remembered being the norm of his life before one event nearly thirty years prior had ruined it all. He was a new man who was so much like that four year old child, the years in between fading away like a bad memory. There was just one thing he missed from that previous existence but he had promised not to dwell on it, on him.

Just like Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester was dead but a simple name change wouldn't bring him back.

"I hope she makes mac and cheese," Ben said, his small hands working to dry a glass.

"At this point, I'll take bread and water," Dean said.

The telephone rang. Reaching over, Dean put it to his ear and held it against his shoulder as he finished up the last plate. "Hello—"

"No, say it right—" Ben insisted in a loud whisper, tugging on his sleeve.

Dean grinned and started over, "Campbell residence." His grin vanished as he heard the one voice that had the power to pull him back to that life that was dead and buried and make all this disappear. "Hey, Bobby."

* * *

The angel turned away from him and crossed his arms in momentary meditation.

"Are you _seriously_ weighing whether you're gonna tell me? I'll find out," the apprentice said with a defiance the angel was starting to find tiring.

"Perhaps, but everything in their time."

"Well, I'm here now so this is the right time, right?"

"You know it doesn't work that way—"

"She's in danger. We're here to protect her, you said so yourself. You brought me because I know her but there's more you're not telling me and you think maybe it _should_ 'work that way' just this once?"

The angel sighed and knew he wouldn't hear the end of this. With two fingers raised he touched the forehead of his ward, the young one's eyes closing as energy flowed through him, and unlocked another door but this time it wasn't to memory. "Now you'll see. You'll understand the rest on your own in time."

He opened his eyes and caught sight of a man walking just past his companion's shoulder. There was history there, ages, millennia of generations passing through him and it was overwhelming. The apprentice's eyes slammed shut and he gasped as he felt a sharp pain boring through his mind.

"You'll control it soon," the angel said.

Working through the pain, the apprentice opened his eyes again and looked over the room as wave after wave of information flooded his vision. "What is it?" He gasped, focusing on it, hoping to dull it.

"Blood memory," was the angel's only response. Like a sound that rang long and loud and dulled through the mind's adjusting to it and numbing against it, the apprentice slowed the images lurching at him and they paused, the room filling as if with hundreds of ghosts. "Every man and woman who came together to produce another is tied to that child through blood memory. The soul leaves an impression on those connected at death. It moves vertically through ancestry but also horizontally through siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews."

The images finally cleared and the spectres all disappeared except for one.

He stared at her in disbelief, watching her as she sat next to the one they'd come for. She was looking over the other's shoulder, reading along with her.

"She's just a memory," the angel said, following his eyes. "She lingers on her mind more than anything else." Gesturing to the room in general he said, "It's why she's here."

The young one's face twisted as he tried to control his emotion. He didn't care if she was real or not he had to see her. Walking towards them, moving past the others there, he stopped just a few paces from them and they both looked up to him, smiling: one flesh and blood, carried by time, the other faded, mist-like, halted in age in her prime. One was an older version of the other: same eyes, same hair. Even the same smile. He understood everything in that moment.

They both spoke at the same time except the memory had no voice. "Hello, Sam," Diana Reid said, closing her book.

* * *

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	6. The Family Business

**Chapter Six**

**The family business**

_1966_

"Annie!" Twelve-year old Mary called out from her bedroom window even though her sore throat was scratchy and her voice was weak. Her father had told her to get up to her room as the argument started to get heated and for her part, Mary tried to never defy Samuel Campbell. From below she saw the retreating form of her big sister, a duffle bag slung over her thin shoulders. Sixteen-year old Annie Campbell looked back towards her house in Lawrence, Kansas and stared at the porch first; to her father with his arms crossed over his chest and her mother standing there silent, not even calling her back even though her eyes were begging her to stay.

Annie looked up to her sister's window, "You know Mimi, just because he says you have to stay in there doesn't really mean you _have _to stay in there. It's your _choice_." Then she screamed with her arms wide open, "Free your mind!"

"Don't encourage her!" Samuel shouted. "You're the one who's leaving!"

"I'm sorry you find higher education _so_ offensive. Maybe if you weren't such a Neanderthal—"

"Annie!" Deanna Campbell reprimanded, looking left and right to the neighbor's homes. It was mid-afternoon on a late June day. Most people were at work and most of the children were at school but she did see one or two window curtains shifting. She could just imagine what kind of attention this would bring to their family and it was attention they didn't need.

Samuel grit his teeth but refused to budge. "For someone who thinks she's so smart—to see you headed off to do whatever the hell you want and turn your back on what we do, what we have to do—"

Annie shrugged the duffle off her shoulders, her long, wavy blonde hair which was almost down to her waist snagging on it a little as the bag fell to the ground. Crouching to dig through the military green she pulled out a book. Hardcover, library bound, it was clearly well read. Moving halfway up the lane she held it out revealing a copy of _The Age of Innocence_ by Edith Wharton.

"Do you know what this is?"

Samuel rolled his eyes, "Damn thing you've always got your nose in at dinner?"

"Can you even comprehend _why_?" And in her voice was a touch of pleading.

"Ever hit you maybe I really don't care?" Her father said and something inside of him instantly regretted it as her blue eyes started to gloss over despite her visibly trying to prevent it. His legs shifted.

"This is the first novel that won a woman the Pulitzer Prize. It is not in Latin, it has no monsters, and it has no ghosts. This is _my_ life," she said, her voice harsh. "Whatever you have to do in yours isn't what I have to do in mine and I will be just _fine_ without whatever your personal motivations might be for doing what you do."

Samuel finally moved from his rooted spot and stepped down the front steps. Annie squared her shoulders and stood before him, strong and defiant. Deanna closed her eyes with an exhale and wished they could just see how stubborn and alike to one another they both were. Maybe if they tried to find their common ground they wouldn't always be fighting.

He looked to his eldest and then to the book held in unwavering hands and asked, "That book ever save a person? That book ever looked in somebody's eyes as they were screaming in the dark for some kind of salvation? That's my motivation. Saving people. Hunting things."

She'd already thought through all that. She'd already built up her defenses against it but hearing her father say it was like a blow to her resolve but she would never show it. "Well," she said with an arch of her brow. "You don't need both of us to follow you into the _family business_. You've got Mimi." And with that she turned on her heels and bent down, grabbing the duffle.

"Annie!" Came a little voice from around the house. Wearing a white nightgown, her bare feet pattering over the grass, Mary jogged to her sister, wheezing through every step. "Don't go," she could only whisper, her raw throat burning. She never thought staying home from school would have caused this much trouble. She'd just been snooping in Annie's room when she found the letter with the Harvard letterhead. She didn't even think why it had been hidden away in the first place, she was just happy, curious and excited. At sixteen her sister had been the youngest graduate at Central Lawrence High and everyone had been talking about her prospects but no one said a thing in their house about it. It had been like it never happened, like Annie hadn't been Valedictorian, like she hadn't been receiving calls from schools from all around the country. Then when Mary found the letter she was so excited she ran first thing to her mom and then everything fell apart.

Annie bent and scooped up her little sister as Mary clung to her. If there was one person Annie would miss with everything she was made of it was Mary. "Mimi, listen, promise me something," she whispered into her ear.

"Okay," Mary whispered back, tears in her voice. She listened as her sister told her something. "Promise," she replied with a nod of her head.

"I've got to go," Annie said, lowering Mary to the path. The youngest Campbell sister shook with tears and her breath hitched. Everything was falling apart and it was her fault.

Samuel looked to the moment shared by his girls and he knew he had to do something. He couldn't watch his family erode but pride and anger chose his words and the moment he spoke he knew he'd only made everything irreversibly worse, "If you leave don't you ever come back!"

Annie looked to him and even though the words cut right through her she mirrored her father's look and said, "Ever hit you maybe I really didn't plan to?" Turning she walked away.

"Diana!" Samuel called but she never did come back home.

_Now_

"What did you make her promise?" Sam asked, seated across from her in the safe house.

Diana looked out through the window to the dark farm country of rural Virginia. This had been the longest she'd ever been lucid and she wondered if it had to do with the angel who'd brought them there to that old farmhouse.

"I told her to make sure one day she found her own kind of happiness, outside of what our parents wanted."

Sam thought back to what Dean had told him of his trip back to when he'd first met their parents and he recalled his own moments with a young Mary who was trying to etch out her life in a world of normalcy. "She did," he said.

Staring out to the darkness, Diana said very quietly, "Oh, but Sam, she didn't. Not really." She could see the memory in the reflection just over her shoulder, its lips moving with hers, "and that was my fault."

* * *

Being told to stay awake after suffering a head injury and having to do so without coffee wasn't the worst torture Spencer Reid had ever experienced but it was extremely close. In his mind he was listlessly fluttering through de Tocqueville when he heard movement coming from the corner. Turning he saw Garcia's eyes blink open and cloud with momentary confusion as she tried to place her surroundings.

"Ohh," she whispered, turning to see him lying back on the upright hospital bed. "Is it morning?" She mumbled before looking to the dark window. "Oh."

"That chair can't be comfortable, Garcia. You should go home."

Penelope yawned and stretched like a feline before reaching for her glasses that she'd put out on the window sill. "With you and Henry still here you think I'll sleep better at home?" She asked him, not really expecting an answer as she stood and stretched out her legs.

Considering her personality and based on previous experience he had to say, "Probably not."

She smiled at him, "That would be a rhetorical question, Reid."

Mirroring her smile he said, "Rhetoric shouldn't be in question form. It defeats the purpose as it encourages debate."

"Well," she said, dragging the chair to the side of the bed. "Whatever." She watched him for a little while. "As tired as you look?"

"I doubt that's physically possible."

"Need anything?"

"I could ask but I'm sure you'll refuse."

"Oh come on, try me."

"Coffee?"

"Next."

He sighed.

"How about a nice caffeine-free Sprite?" She offered.

"I might as well eat sugar cubes," he grumbled.

She poked him, "Is that a _yes_?"

With a heavy sigh he said, "Yes, please."

"Ha," she said, triumphant, before getting up and collecting her bag to go hunt down a vending machine.

For the first time that night, he was alone. Spencer looked around the empty room and wanted to resist the urge he had to clutch the book by his side. He'd been afraid before. He knew when those times had occurred in his life but each time the fear never felt as irrational as it had right at that moment. His mind fought to accept the things he'd seen as real but a lifetime of denial was warring against him. Monsters, ghosts, demons . . . they weren't fiction, they weren't the works of active imaginations. The supernatural was real and the fact remained that he was alone.

He picked up the book.

* * *

She looked up to him from the kitchen table, her hands working quickly as he went through a brush up tutorial on how to use a sawed-off shotgun. She tried to catalogue everything that was in the closet under the stairs that she would need for every kind of bogey attack. She'd been taught how to bless water, oil, she knew how to use salt and iron on spirits and knew all the points to etching out a devil's trap (even though Dean had drawn one around the house, under the soil, with iron rods during a weekend of "gardening").

Lisa Campbell, the name change unofficial but the ring she wore was a solid promise, knew what she'd been in for when she took Dean into her home those three months prior. She knew what he did; she knew the work that was as much a part of him as anything could be. She understood that when he came to her, her life might have changed and she was prepared for that, for him.

After what happened to Ben back in their old neighborhood on the other side of Cicero, she knew that no matter what, these things could find you and destroy your life. She preferred to be prepared and had asked him to teach her and Ben how to be ready for whatever might come their way. She'd thought he'd jump at the chance but she never imagined that when Dean came to her it would be to transition to a life that was so unlike his own. He was reluctant; she could see it in him. The idea of teaching her and Ben how to stand up to the monsters scared him, made the possibility that they could be hurt real to him, but he did. He did teach them because under all his need and want to forget the past, the present remained and in that present was knowing that even though he could ignore the darkness there was no guarantee that the darkness would ignore him.

Dean looked down to Ben who sat next to his mother and Dean watched his eyes take in everything he was saying. God the kid reminded him of himself, trying so hard to be that strong soldier being made to stand the fort all alone and Dean cursed Bobby's name for making this moment possible.

"When do I get to use the shotgun?" Ben asked as Dean ran through a checklist.

"When you're taller than it," Dean grumbled.

"You learned how to use it before you were eleven," he protested.

Dean put the shotgun up, _high_, on the hooks above the sink. "Yeah, that's my point."

Ben blew out his cheeks.

Lisa finished up what she was doing and wrapped everything up, handing him the bag. "Eat the tuna first or you'll make yourself sick. The chips aren't _breakfast_, okay? That's what I packed the roast beef for. If you hadn't eaten all the pie—"

"Wait, there was pie?" Dean asked before looking to Ben.

Ben's cheeks were red and with a heavy amount of guilt he raised his hand, "Um, that was me."

"Dude, seriously? You said you ate pizza."

The kid smiled, reminding him, "That was for lunch."

Dean jerked his thumb to the front of the house, "Go oil the windows." Instead of going to where he was directed, Ben went to Dean and wrapped his hands around his waist.

"Be careful, Pops,"

Carefully putting his hand to the kid's head, Dean's eyes went to Lisa and the look in his face was so desperately lost that she had to put a hand to her mouth to cover an unexpected gasp. It was just a momentary revelation and he quickly recovered but she didn't think she could ever forget how raw and exposed he'd been in that moment. The last time she'd seen it was when, on that night in May, he fell apart in her arms.

"You too," Dean said, his voice low. Any higher and it would crack, break, fall apart. Ben turned around, grabbed the bottle of consecrated oil from the counter and scuttled down the hall.

Turning to Lisa he didn't have to say a word as she drew him in a close embrace. "Don't go," she said quietly, knowing he had to, knowing for Bobby he would, but also knowing he needed to hear those words right now. He held her closer for that, thanking her.

From the hallway, just around the corner, Ben watched his parents kiss and wiggled a little thinking it was the grossest thing ever but something inside of him was so happy to see it. The last time his Pops left it had been for a long time but he came back. Ben knew he would come back and that made everything right in the whole world.

* * *

He was only alone for a few minutes before he heard footsteps moving down the hallway. He immediately knew it wasn't Garcia as her distinctive heel clicks were absent. He knew it wasn't the nurses as the sound wasn't rubber-soled but heavy like boots. The prospect that he would be faced with the thing that was causing him so much apprehension and fear caused a cold sweat to break out over his skin.

Looking quickly to the clock on the side table he knew there was a strong chance he had no reason to worry. The steps came closer and Spencer felt that familiar sick feeling he'd come to barely tolerate.

Whoever that was, there was no reason to think they were even headed to his room. Of all the people on this floor, it would be highly presumptive to think—the doorknob turned. If he had anything left in his body to bring up he would have right at that moment.

The door opened.

Spencer wasn't exactly sure what the Bible in his grip was supposed to do, but holding it up in his hand, he wasn't afraid to throw it at the head of his visitor.

"It's a Bible, not a baseball," Bobby Singer said, standing in the doorway.

Spencer collapsed back onto the bed, clutching the book to his chest.

"Mmm hmm," Bobby said, walking across the threshold of the room and looking the kid over. "So, you're just gonna _trust_ I'm not some demon wearing my skin?"

Spencer sighed with a smile saying, "You?" As if it were the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard.

Bobby didn't say anything to that. Spencer never found out what happened to him last year; never knew that yes, it was possible for Bobby Singer to get ridden like a mechanical bull. Granted, when it happened he'd been beaten unconscious and the warding tattoo had been sliced away from his chest, but the kid didn't need little details like that just then.

"Is my mom okay?"

"She's getting settled in." Looking over all the bandages he didn't expect to react the way he usually did when he saw one of his fool idjits injured but he did and more: Spencer was a thin little thing. He grumbled, "A bit more than a concussion."

"There was considerably more involved than just falling out of a window," Spencer said, memories of the night surging through him.

"Well," crossing his arms over his chest, Bobby jerked his chin to Spencer and said, "let's hear what happened."

* * *

Diana stood on the front porch of the farmhouse and through the light of an old kerosene lantern she could see the angel walking around the property laying sigils and warding signs of protection. Sam stood next to her knowing she couldn't see what he saw as brilliant blue Enochian markings were etched into the soil.

"Castiel?" She asked Sam, clearing up the name.

"Yeah, we just call him _Cas_."

Diana smiled at that, biting her lip. _Angels_. In all her research and writings she'd known there must have been things as angels same as demons but she'd never met one. "He looks so every day," she observed. She'd always thought it was hubris on the part of humanity to imagine angelic beings, even God himself, would look like man.

"He's in a host," Sam said and when she looked up at him aghast, he explained, "Angels can only enter a person by invitation. Completely different than demons."

She considered him a moment, "And you?"

"I'm not exactly . . . one hundred percent . . ." he couldn't really verbalize it. He was sure she couldn't hear the entire story. How could he tell her that he'd been Satan's vessel? That he'd _invited_ him in? How could he say that he committed suicide by jumping into a Hell prison-dimension in order to save the world and perhaps more particularly and selfishly, his brother? How could he tell her that he'd spent what was roughly the equivalent of a week in that place being torn apart for his role in Lucifer's downfall, all the while considering how long Dean had been trapped there himself and having a far better appreciation for what his brother went through and how much he had withstood? Could he tell her that he appeared back on Earth only a few hours later in real time with powers surging within him and his mind cleared of every memory of his brother, his life, his entire existence? Should he tell her that his first memory of his new life was of standing on a dark street, looking in at Dean, Lisa and Ben having a family dinner and the only thoughts that had raged through him was hurt, pain, kill, blood and a million other things that so overwhelmed him that the streetlight above him flickered out? Could he tell her that the angelic powers inside of him was Lucifer still latched onto him?

Taking a deep breath he only said the last part of the story, "I died and Cas saved me."

On that dark road in Indiana he remembered his second memory which was Castiel's hands on his head, opening his mind and with a power he hadn't had before, the newly appointed archangel did what Michael had failed to do. He beat back the devil.

"I came back a little different."

He beat back the devil and gained a student in the process. _A very powerful student_.

Diana nodded, seeing there was more but not pressing it. She'd seen enough evasion (and better) in Group that she knew what to ask and when to ask it.

"And your brother?" She asked.

How especially could he tell her that Dean didn't even know he was alive?

* * *

Spencer didn't expect Bobby to be so quiet. He wasn't sure why he'd expected him to jump up ready for action but something in his expression; something in his manner was frightening. Spencer edged up on the bed, his head spinning a little as he did. Bobby was worried. He'd expected that with how he'd reacted to his voicemail that demons in general were simple enough for him to handle but by the look on his face, Spencer understood that something in his story unsettled him.

Bobby looked to Spencer and he knew he was worrying the kid but there was nothing for it. The fact that the demon had tried to do to the kid's friend what it had done to Mary Winchester wasn't all that shocking. Demons loved the theatrical and the Winchester story was legend. The fact that it had gone after Spencer was something of a shock as Diana had tried to keep him as far from this life as she could; it was only during her episodes that her paranoia took over and she revealed who she'd been and what she'd done, but Spencer hadn't believed a word of it. But then again, demons had ways of finding things out and the fact that he was Samuel Campbell's grandson was enough to make him a target.

What most concerned Bobby, throughout the entire story once he'd heard it was—"And you're sure?" Bobby asked once he'd settled himself. "The eyes. They were white?"

Spencer was puzzled. "Does that mean something?"

Bobby had to sit down. His face was paling. Of course the kid was sure; his brain was practically a camera.

"Bobby?"

"Does it mean something?" He asked, knowing he'd need a lot more help than just Dean who was probably still six hours out. He thought this was behind him, he thought once the Apocalypse had been put on ice he'd only have to deal with everyday concerns: vampires, skin walkers, the random poltergeist. He never expected to be dragged back into a fight that had the potential to turn all-out-war one more time. "Boy, it means you're damn lucky to still be _breathing_. You didn't meet up with some pissant demon with a grudge. White-eyed demons are as hardass as they get short of goddamn Lucifer himself."

Spencer didn't know what that meant. He knew about angelic hierarchy but whatever literature there was about demonic hierarchy was literature he specifically avoided and his mother's schizophrenic episodes never included _anything_ close to specific detail.

"But I exorcised it," he began, not knowing what else to say.

Bobby was already up on his feet, his phone in his hands. He looked to the kid in the bed and his features clenched together like he was explaining something he wished he didn't have to, "White-eyed demons are like cats with mice: they like to play with their prey. It _let_ you exorcise it; it's messing with your head."

He didn't know how to even react to that. Dozens of questions flashed in his mind but the foremost one was one he dared not ask: _why me?_

Instead he barely managed, "Who are you calling?"

"The cavalry."

* * *

.

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._**  
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	7. I Burned the Candle at Both Ends

**Chapter Seven**

**I burned the candle at both ends and it gave a lovely light**

"What are you reading?" He asked, looking in.

"_A Few Figs from Thistles_," Diana said before glancing to the handful of books that rested on the side table. She'd taken them from her room at Bennington. She'd had to be quick and discerning and only brought along her favorites.

Sam stood at the entrance to the small room that had been set aside for her. It was late on the East coast but she was still operating on Vegas time and he . . . well, he no longer got tired.

"Edna St. Vincent Millay," she read the author's name. "First woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry," she added as something of an explanation. Speaking from the ancient four-poster bed she exhaled, "I _worshiped_ them. The history makers," she smiled up to him, closing the book. "I was growing up in a time of such social upheaval and change and revolution but conversely existing inside a world that was so separate from what the rest of humanity would call a _baseline_ form of reality. Classmates would ask my opinions on the prevalent and pressing things like women's rights, integration, the war and all I knew was I was so cloistered that I _had_ no opinions and it terrified me."

He understood the feeling.

"Every girl I knew was either reading Friedan or Susann," she laughed. Shaking her head a little she said, "I wanted to understand who I was as a person in society. I . . . I wasn't raised as a person, as an _individual_, I was a—"

"Tool," Sam provided knowing every bit of discontent that ran through her.

Closing her eyes she smiled. "Of course you know what I mean." She patted the bed next to her and watched as her nephew sank to the worn calico quilt. "Your father came to see me, after you left." With a memory of the night John Winchester went to Bennington Sanitarium (and not through the front door, mind you) in hopes of righting a wrong he couldn't comprehend how he'd made in the first place, all the while still blaming others for what happened, Diana wore a sad wistful smile.

Sam frowned, not understanding why his dad would—

"Oh," it came to him, another door of memory opening.

There was an old house along a dark stretch of road. He'd been tired, his voice raw from screaming. He was storming out the front door with his dad shouting behind him, spitting ultimatums and then there was Dean trying to calm it all down, trying, as he always did, to mend the fractures in their broken family. And just out in the road was a small blue Volvo waiting for him, the driver standing by the door watching the scene. Sam knew he would need the ride; he knew he needed someone there who understood him, who knew what it was like to live through oppressive irrationality. He'd planned the day he would show his dad his acceptance packet from Stanford for weeks and the car was waiting because Sam knew exactly how the conversation would end. John Winchester was nothing if not predictable.

Diana's voice pulled him from the memory, "I'd already been there two years but he thought my words would still mean something. That even though I couldn't say much to convince _you_, I could somehow convince _him_. Get him to talk you out of it."

"What did you say to my dad?"

"I told him that I agreed with him. You should have stayed."

He looked at her, surprised. "But—but you went through the same thing."

And with a burst of a single laugh Diana Reid shook her head and said, "Yes, and here I sit, a certified schizophrenic. I'll live the rest of my days in an asylum. And here you are," she gestured to him, "a step above the walking dead. Whereas, from what you've told me about Dean, those siblings of ours who stayed behind and toed the company line have had some true taste of the love and the normalcy we so craved." And then quietly, "But of course, _only_ a taste."

Sam felt coldness pass over and through him and he understood what she was saying.

Slipping her book open again she looked to the poem that destroyed her heart every time it was read:

_"My candle burns at both ends;  
It will not last the night;  
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-__  
It gives a lovely light."_

She turned to him and nodded. "You and me, we've lived our lives like Grecian tragedies, running from fate only to meet death on an old dirt road." With a sigh she added, "but we called it freedom."

* * *

Bobby hung up the phone and Spencer looked at him openly. Overhearing the conversation which began with, _We've_ and ended with _got a problem_, he wondered what any of that was supposed to mean to whoever it was on the other end of the line. Bobby hadn't given whoever it was any details at all. Of course, Spencer could assume that the person on the other end knew where Bobby was, that was simple. He'd driven over five hours with ready access to a mobile phone; it wasn't so hard to imagine he could have set some balls in motion if he'd discovered he would need backup but the way he'd made the _white-eyed_ demons sound, Spencer was sure even the cavalry should be made aware of who they were up against. Then again he should probably also assume that the person or much more likely, _persons_, he'd just called may have been experts in this field of particular demonology and so a simple call such as that could probably hold all necessary information needed for what was to—

"Watching you think is like trying to keep my eye on the ball in a game of ping pong on steroids," Bobby said, pulling Spencer out of his thoughts. "It ever occur to you that you could just ask a question?"

Spencer had encountered instructors and professors throughout his life who were either open to any kind of inquiry a student presented or were completely opposed. He tended to make all of them the latter as any questions of his challenged even their own understanding of the subject at hand. In most of his classroom interactions he'd always come completely prepared and as such only saw the lectures as ways to clarify the information he'd already found on textbook and journal pages. When he heard contradictory information, his hand would always go up for clarification as most other students, all who towered over him, would accept the teacher's words with absolute faith in their roles as _expert_. Some knew him well enough to groan at his raised hand, some were delighted if the teacher was a particular brand of asshole.

He wasn't afraid of asking questions then but why was it that Bobby Singer made him feel like every time he raised his hand he was asking an astrophysics professor in a graduate lecture at MIT why the sky was blue.

His lips opened and closed for a moment before he just remained silent. Bobby saw this and sighed. "I don't want you listening to what I say just 'cause you're scared to death. You've gotta know what the hell is goin' on and you've gotta understand it, so just cause it sounds like I'm two minutes shy from bitin' your head off, man up, ask the question anyway and never mind if I tear you a new one."

Spencer quirked his lips, licking them before observing, "Was that supposed to instill confidence? I ask because I'm pretty sure it's having the opposite effect."

Bobby grumbled, "Yeah, there's the smartass I remember."

Allowing a grin to crack, he observed, "You said you were calling the cavalry. In all of four words?"

"What?" Bobby grunted. "Not enough screaming and flailing?"

Spencer exhaled.

Bobby cut him some slack. A _very_ small amount. "We've got a code, that friend in a high place I mentioned."

A lurch tugged at his stomach, "But my mom—"

"She won't be alone," Bobby assured him, saying no more of that. It was enough he didn't tell Dean what the job was, the reason he was driving eleven hours out from the comfort of his home. It was enough he was keeping Sam's secret from him for the last three months. If he even mentioned Sam to Spencer and opened up _that_ can of worms there was no doubt when Dean hit the reservation everything would go straight to shit even more so than Bobby was _sure_ it would go when Dean finally showed up and saw the kid.

Nine years. It had been nine years since they'd last seen one another and it had only been in passing on the worst night of Dean Winchester's life.

It had also been two and a half years since Spencer Reid had been told they had both died.

* * *

_2001_

He'd watched his parents argue in those weeks and months before his father exited their lives. At the time he was sure there was nothing worse than the screaming matches he'd observed but this was ten times worse.

"Sam!" John Winchester shouted from the top of the path that led to a small, ramshackle wood house.

An eighteen-year old Sam Winchester was storming away from him, attempting to push past his elder brother who was trying to keep him from leaving. "Sammy, come on!" Twenty-two year old Dean pleaded with him, his hands on his shoulders.

"Get off of me, Dean!" Sam raged, his hands up, his bag slung over one shoulder. He'd never hit his brother before but he was close. "You wanna stay? Stay. I don't give a shit but don't try to keep me here too."

John watched the scene between his children and half of him was a boiling rumble of pure irate rage that would never back down from anything and the other half was falling to pieces at the possibility that Sam would really get in that car and drive off into the night and he'd never see him again.

"Sammy—" John began, something softer in his tone once that fear grabbed a hold of him . . . and that was when Sam pushed Dean away from him. It was sharp, hard and nearly knocked Dean off his feet. The boy settled himself, trying to ignore it, quick to forgive it but there was a lingering look there, in his eyes that was so hurt and shocked and . . . _crushed_. There was no way this fool obsession was more important to Sam than pushing away his brother and John had even counted on that fact as he allowed his youngest to stomp away like a two year old in the middle of a tantrum. Dean would bring him back. Dean always brought him back but when John exited the house knee-deep in indignant fury and saw the car waiting there, he knew there was more to this fight than he ever considered. _He was serious_. Sam was absolutely and completely set on leaving.

The idea, the sheer _thought_ about that night's premeditation was enough to tip John over the edge and it drew out the words from his lips before he even had a second to consider them, "If you leave don't you ever come back!"

Dean's face immediately tensed at that declaration and his eyes went wide over Sam's shoulder to see his father. "Dad?" He barely managed to say before looking back to Sam who wore an eerily calm look of absolution.

"Bye Dean," he said, sidestepping him and moving to the car.

Wiping his jaw with his hand, Dean turned towards the car and locked eyes with the driver who had shifted his eyes away at that moment. The betrayal Dean wore was open and all his defenses were gone.

"You even know what you're doing right now?" He asked him, his words rough.

Sam entered the car and slammed the door, calling out, "Spencer, we gotta go."

Twenty-year old Spencer Reid, fresh off his third graduate-level commencement speech, his fourth commencement speech in a row, and hoping his acceptance to Quantico would stem the need for a fifth, looked to Dean and didn't think he could move.

"Right now," Dean said, "I don't give a damn what you think of me, my dad, what we do. This is my _family_ and you're fucking it up _goddamn royally_ right now and you don't even have a clue why or how."

Dipping his eyes to the top of his car and nervously pushing a loose strand of hair behind one ear, Spencer nodded, accepting the observation. "Dean," he said, his voice a little strained. He coughed, clearing it. "I understand your need to keep everything together. I do. I've been there. But playing along with your dad's delusions isn't healthy. What Sam's doing is what's right in this situation."

Dean's fists clenched and he was sure he was about to launch himself over the roof of that tiny fucking clown car. He nodded, "Yeah. And maybe next I should follow your lead and cart him off to the loony bin."

That _hurt_. More than anything that hurt the most because if there had been _one_ person he knew would never bring that up to wound him, it was Dean. It was a clear and _human_ reflection of what was going on inside of him that Spencer understood the depth of what it was he was doing by even being there that night. With a small nod, Spencer dipped and entered his car. Without looking back, he and Sam drove away.

_Now_

Sam couldn't help but think about him when Cas finally told him what the case was as Diana was collecting her things back in Las Vegas. There was a constant undercurrent of worry in him. Spencer knew next to nothing about this life, everything he'd heard about it came in a shroud of madness. Now he had to not only face the truth about things he'd never believed in, once he found out the truth of their relationship it would only lead to a highway of questions that could only be answered in the worst possible ways.

"Sam." Castiel appeared at the room door. Rising from the bed, Sam followed him out to the dark hallway.

"You've been out there a while," he said. "This place is like a fort." Looking around the walls, Sam's eyes saw nothing but markings.

"I have more protocols to follow now," Cas said before grumbling, "It's kind of obnoxious."

Sam chuckled with a nod. "At least you bypassed middle management."

Thinking of Zachariah, Castiel counted his blessings and stopped complaining. Looking up to Sam he said, "Bobby called. He needs me in Fairfax."

Frowning, Sam asked, "Why? Bobby can handle a demon."

Diana had emerged at the doorway. She knew from past experience that when an _ex parte_ was occurring, it was generally best to eavesdrop.

"It's a level five demon," Cas explained.

For a moment there, Sam was sure he wasn't hearing right. "Wait, white-eyes? Like Lilith and Alistair?"

"White-eyed demons?" They both turned to her puzzled expression. Diana stepped out into the hall. "Black, red and yellow I've heard of but white? Where on the hierarchy do they sit?" She could sense their hesitation and she knew they hadn't really grasped the fact that she'd been living in a mental institution for over a decade. "Tell me."

"There are two levels of white-eyed demons, both sit at the top of the hierarchy," Castiel said.

Considering that a moment, Diana felt the instant shock of ice crawl up her spine. It all came to her in that moment and it worried her more than she could say. She fell very quiet, feeling her grip on her clarity fading.

Cas looked to Sam and said, "You understand what this means?"

"Yeah," Sam said, clenching his fists. If a fifth-level demon was involved, as fort-like that Cas' protections were, they wouldn't be impenetrable. Level five demons were Generals and there were only a handful of them that even existed. They were ancient, powerful, and vicious. With Lilith gone and Lucifer bound, whoever was angling for Spencer was most likely the thing causing the disturbances all along the East coast for the last few weeks he and Castiel had been investigating. Hell, Bobby had gone to Charleston on a tip from Sam.

Level five demons had followers.

"If I'm not here and they come—"

With a nod, Sam said, "I know, Cas. Fall back position." He wasn't cocky enough just yet to think he could take down a white-eyed. "It's not my first time battling demons."

"Yes, well, it will be your first time doing it alone." He looked to Diana who was beginning to get a faraway look on her face. "And with someone you had to look after." Reaching over he placed two fingers to her left temple and watched as the clouds around her vision cleared. The protocols now guiding him also restricted his effect on the human mind. Whatever he did could only be temporary.

Sam looked to his aunt and gave her an encouraging smile as he felt Cas disappear a moment later.

* * *

"Um," Penelope said, pausing at the room door before stepping back and looking at the number. Going back inside she stared a little more openly at Bobby Singer who was blocking her view of Reid. "Hello?"

"Garcia?" Spencer said as Bobby stepped to the side and turning to see her walk into the room.

"Uh, Reid," she began, her steps hesitant. "Um, hi?" She said, almost waving but only managing a shoulder shrug as her hands were filled with snacks.

"Oh," Spencer looked from Garcia to Bobby and said, "This is my uncle, Bobby."

"Oh!" Garcia said, her eyes widening, "Sorry, I didn't," she came up to him and almost attempted to extend her hand to shake his when she remembered the load she was carrying. Turning to Spencer's table she dropped the snacks and then spun around with her hand extended, "Pleased to meet you sir, I'm Penelope Garcia, pick either one to call me, everyone does."

Bobby shook her hand with a pleasant smile plastered on his lips saying, "I think I'll go with Penelope."

"I've only met Reid's mom, are you from that side of the family? Oh, not that if you were from his dad's side I'd be shocked or anything—I mean, not that there's an expectation—"

"Definitely his mom's side. We try not to talk about his daddy."

Garcia exhaled, "Okay." Looking back to the window she saw the faintest hints of a breaking day. "It's either really early or really late."

Bobby followed her line of sight and suddenly felt the entire twenty hours he'd been awake. "There are times of day when it's both," he said stifling a yawn into his fist. "I'm gonna need some coffee," he said to neither in particular.

"Ha, definitely related," she smiled to herself, cracking open a can of Sprite and handing it to Reid who accepted it with unhidden discontent. Opening a bag of jalapeño pretzel sticks she absently handed it to Bobby,

". . . thanks . . ."

And then cracked open a bottle of water for herself.

Bobby looked into the bag of pretzels and frowned before reaching in and taking one.

"So, if you were doing guy-talk I'll totally vamoose and find some cans to kick over in the hallway 'til you're done," she offered. Bobby and Spencer looked to one another and she nodded, "Uh huh, I'm gonna go find a comfy couch out there and make myself obnoxious to the nurses as I ignore sunrise for a few more hours cause I feel—" she looked at Reid and arched a brow, "well, better than you right now." She clucked him under the chin and patted his shoulder before she snagged two bags of snacks and headed out of the room again.

Bobby looked to him, "Is that what a Fed looks like these days?"

"Hey—"

"No," Bobby smiled popping another pretzel in his mouth, "I like her."

"Who?" A voice came from Spencer's opposite side and Reid practically jumped out of his skin as he spun around to see a man in a trench coat hovering just over his shoulder. Moving quick to grab the Bible, ready to bash the man right between his blue eyes, Spencer felt the book tugged away from him.

"Boy, quit that," Bobby said, putting the Bible on the side table.

Looking from Bobby to their visitor, Spencer gaped a little. If the cannula hadn't been supplying him a steady stream of oxygen he was sure he'd be hyperventilating.

"This is that friend I was telling you about," Bobby explained, laying a calming hand on Spencer's shoulder. "As jumpy as a rabbit," he mumbled.

"I think under the circumstances," Spencer managed to say, eyes still focused on the man who looked down on him so quietly. There was a foreign air to him and Spencer only noticed it because he recognized that quality in himself when it was pointed out to him: like he was observing something curious and different. Sitting up a little he felt encouraged to meet this man eye to eye and they seemed to silently scan over each other.

"Great," Bobby grumbled. "The aliens are communicating."

_Friend in a high place_.

Spencer shot a look to Bobby and his mouth opened a little before snapping shut. Venturing again he opened his mouth and asked very quietly, ". . . is he an alien?"

"Boy, of course he's not a alien!"

Cheeks warming, Spencer looked back to the man and they engaged in another glance over before he asked, "_This_ is the cavalry?"

"Yes," Bobby answered.

"But . . . _not_ an alien?"

"Where the hell did you even get alien from?-!"

Spencer finally shrugged, completely confused, "I-I don't know. I suppose I didn't expect . . . a younger version of Hotch."

"Castiel, this is Spencer. Spencer, this is Cas. _Not_ an alien," Bobby said.

Spencer waved his bandaged hand to him. Castiel looked to his hand, tracking it like a hunting snake for a moment before extending two fingers to Spencer's forehead. Eyes crossing, Spencer looked to the fingers touching his flesh and frowned before something strong passed through him like fire and ice and a warm bath all at the same time. Not realizing his eyes had closed, he opened them feeling a lightness throughout his body.

"What—" he asked when he felt the heaviness that had throbbed at his head and neck was gone. He moved his hands to his throat and head trying to take stock of the injuries that no longer hurt when his tongue passed over the once sharp pain that had been the gouge in his mouth when he'd fallen onto JJ's bathroom floor and had sliced the inside of his cheek. The pain was gone but most importantly, the cut was also gone.

A moment passed in shocked realization before he looked to his fingers. With care he started to unfurl the bandages, ready to see the slices in his flesh from the broken glass and the fingernails that were cracked to the bed from being drawn against the wood of the hallway floor. The first bit of flesh emerged and it was smooth and unbroken. Quickly unwrapping both hands he saw they were fine as if nothing happened to them. Even as he wiggled his foot in his ankle brace, there was no pain.

Spencer looked back to the man who he could now safely deduce that if not alien, he was still most surely not human.

"Castiel," he said tentatively to the man who had just healed him.

"Hello. And no, I am not extraterrestrial. I am actually non-terrestrial. I am from the heavenlies though humans often shorten that to _heaven_."

That definitely qualified as a high place.

"You're a—" he could only see the questions now. The almost infinite number of questions he'd hypothesized that he would ask if he ever met an agent of either Heaven, Hell or the Afterlife. It had been an assignment for one of his Philosophy classes and though he had submitted the usual list of questions regarding morals and reasoning for life in general and to what end life was created, he also had lists and lists of questions he would _actually_ ask if the situation, however extremely unlikely, presented itself.

Castiel nodded, "An angel of the Lord."

He was being targeted by one of the deadliest demons in existence; he had just survived nearly being killed. He was face to face with an angel. And after all this, he didn't know why, but it just popped out of his mouth.

Spencer cupped his chin and stared intently into those solemn eyes and asked, "Why _is_ the sky blue?"

Bobby gave the back of his head an exasperated look and threw his hands up in the air but Castiel just cocked his head to the side and replied, "Why _not_ blue?"

His coworkers always wondered how he could sometimes get caught in an emotion like awe and fascination in the middle of a case that involved horrific scenes of murder and gore but with a mind like his he had to learn to compartmentalize things quickly or he'd be overwhelmed. At that moment he was being completely and absolutely irreversibly overwhelmed by everything that had happened that night and now by the realization that yes, there were angels and yes there was a God. Maybe the sensation running through him was the giddiness a person felt just before they passed out from shock but he couldn't even grasp shock at that moment. He just kept thinking, moving, processing, filing and _being_ because if he stopped, even for a second, it would most literally drown him. He was two steps away from a fugue state but that was alright, that was fine. It had to be. Even if Bobby was sure the only thing that could possibly protect him from the thing that was after him was an angel.

An angel.

The only thing that could protect him was an . . .

"Spencer?" Bobby's hands were on his face. "Breathe, come on, breathe."

So this was what a panic attack felt like?

* * *

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	8. Tales Dead Men Tell

**Chapter Eight**

**Tales dead men tell**

"I have to at least tell them that I'm leaving," Spencer said, digging through the bag Garcia had packed for him. An eyebrow rose at his selections and for a moment he wondered how she had managed to find the jeans and shirts Derek had gotten him for Christmas and his birthday for the last several years. There was a reason he'd packed them at the back of his closet.

"Hmm," Bobby said, looking at the dark blue jeans and slim-fit powder blue button-up shirt. "When'd you step into the Gap?"

"Never," Spencer quietly hummed as he considered the clothes. It was clear Garcia was trying to get him to be a mini-me version of Derek. "And I'm sure that's an old reference." Well, it was his only choice. He paused in a moment of prudery until he realized that the only stranger in the room was an _angel_. He quickly began getting dressed.

"Well, I hope you're not expectin' me to apologize for that," Bobby said. "Tell them you're leaving," he shrugged. "You're not hearing any complaints from me. Hell, the people you work with, if you just up and vanish, demons won't be the only things on our asses. I can deal with _those_ chasing me but I don't have any plans to be on some FBI most wanted list for kidnapping."

Spencer considered what his team's reaction would be if they thought he'd managed to get himself kidnapped a second time. After their initial exclamations that he had the worst luck on Earth, they'd search for him with everything they had. He appreciated the idea of that, however unnecessary it would be.

"Well, if I don't expect them to come for me, I can't just disappear from the hospital," he said as he buttoned his shirt. Looking to his fingers, he began to re-bandage them. He also considered what would happen if the nurses noted his lack of general bruising outside of the gauze or if they wanted to change the dressing or if the doctors absolutely insisted on checking him over before he signed himself out. There were too many variables involved with clandestine miraculous healing, _not that he was complaining_, of course. He did however, but only for half a second, wonder if it would have been inappropriate to ask Castiel to un-heal him for the pure optics of it.

"You're doing it again," Bobby said. "Thinking and not saying anything."

"How am I supposed to explain this?" He asked, holding out his hands and then pointing to his still braced foot.

"You don't. You've got a badge. Add a little urgency behind it and they won't ask you nothin' more than where to send the bill." Cynical and accurate, thy name was Bobby Singer. Digging through the plastic bag that contained the clothes he'd worn to JJ's house the night before, Spencer found his badge and nodded. Injured federal agent backed by a sense of immediate danger, most people would allow their imaginations to run wild. That in of itself was a form of domestic terrorism but so was concrete proof of magical disappearing wounds.

_Weigh it._

"What do I say to my team?" He asked, repacking the bag.

"Family emergency."

It was so simple but it had never crossed his mind. He'd never had a family emergency. His entire family consisted of his mom and he had made sure she was well taken care of. Bobby was making this all seem so easy. How could this situation be made so simple? Bobby was extremely worried with the idea that a white-eyed demon was after him but the fact that he had a code to signify that with Castiel, the fact that he even _knew_ Castiel was enough for Spencer to pause. It was like the DHS protocols they had to learn for national emergencies: everything was regimented and color coded and even nuclear attack had a protocol. It worried him and even though there could be a loose connection to profiling, in that serial killers, rapists and kidnappers had tidy academic slots of classification and set ways they needed to be dealt with, Spencer understood that human evil, as horrible as it could be, was on a completely different scale than the evil Bobby dealt with. He couldn't imagine how easily it was coming to him.

Dozens of new questions crossed his mind but he shelved them for later and just asked the one that was immediate to the moment. "What do I say to Garcia?"

Bobby scratched at his beard and definitely didn't have an easy answer to that one.

"Garcia?" Castiel asked.

"_Guys_," came a singsong voice from the door followed by a small knock. "Who wants decaf?" Penelope Garcia walked into the hospital room with two steaming cups of coffee she'd acquired from a machine down the hall. She stopped in her tracks at the sight of a new stranger but absolutely gaped at the sight of Reid in his street clothes. "Um, hi?" She said to the surprisingly hot trench-coated new guy and to Spencer she asked, "It's six am, why are you dressed? And, _wow_, I have great taste."

"They're _my_ clothes," he protested.

"Which were at the back and bottom of your closet and packed in a box labeled _Clothes from Derek_."

"There was a reason for that."

"Well, if you didn't want me to pick 'em, next time don't label them so _provocatively_."

"What—"

Bobby looked to Cas and gestured to him saying, "Penelope, this is—" it only took him a second to come up with the most logical lie available for the situation, "My son, Cas." Bobby had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing at the momentary and minute look of pure astonishment Castiel gave him.

"Hello," Castiel said to her.

_Ooh_, his voice was like midnight chocolate and it made her toes tingle. She had to chant a mantra of _Kevin_ as she smiled to him and introduced herself. Her baby hottie had a big hottie cousin. _Nice_.

"We're having something of a family emergency," Bobby continued. "I told the kid to relax and rest up, we'd be fine but he won't listen to a word I'm saying."

Garcia looked to Reid and knew he had to rest and she clearly wanted to press the issue but Spencer took his cue from Bobby and he said, "They were going to release me in a few hours anyway; I didn't see any logical reason to stay."

"Is it really serious, the emergency?" Garcia asked him.

If he could loosely translate _family emergency_ to _powerful demon bent on toying with me_ then, "Yes, it's very serious."

She knew Reid didn't say things like that lightly and his tension immediately became hers. He saw this and wished he didn't have to worry her but knew that if she knew the truth, whatever anxiety she was feeling now would pale in comparison.

"I'll debrief Hotch on the road," he said, pulling up his packed bag.

"Okay," she nodded. "Oh, Reid, the team at your place—" He'd almost forgotten about everything that happened prior to the fire at JJ's. Everything suddenly came back to him. "They can't figure out how the unsub got into your system. It wasn't a hard-crack so, you know, relief he wasn't physically in your place. They figured it was either sent directly through your ISP or you picked up a targeted Trojan." As a side comment she asked, "Your browser's homepage is Wikipedia?"

"Is that important?"

She smiled, "No, I just wondered why the walking encyclopedia's homepage was an _actual_ encyclopedia."

"Oh, I edit it."

"Wikipedia?"

"Most of it."

She blinked. Bobby chuckled. "You seriously need to figure out Facebook," she muttered. "Long story short, if you're headed back to your place, just don't freak when you see your machine's not there. They moved it to my place in Quantico."

With a nod, Spencer drew out with a well-managed smile, "So, you're going to do what a team of forensic computer scientists _couldn't_?"

"Ha, I Riverdance circles around those amateurs," she declared. "Unsub might be dead but Hotch was insistent, and boy was he _seriously_ insistent, on finding out why Mr. Psycho was channeling Tobias Hankel."

The name froze him but the effect it had was only visible to those who really knew him. He hadn't heard the name said in so long. Garcia saw what her words did to him and it hit her that no one had told him about the binary-coded message or the routing and rerouting particularities she'd noticed the night before. It's exactly what _made_ Tobias so idiosyncratic and his methods so individualistic.

"Reid, I'm so sorry. I figured—well, he sent a message last night when you were on your way to JJ's. You didn't have your phone so I couldn't tell you and then everything happened and then he was dead so it didn't really matter in the face of you know, _hospital_ and _Jell-o_—"

"What was the message, Garcia?"

She recited it, knowing she would never forget the words, "_Did you think I was dead, Dr. Reid?_ And it was signed _T. H_. And then everything about the set up was familiar and the way the system was implemented was all _him_, it was so weird. We still don't have an ID on the body so Hotch thinks this might be the fastest way to find out who he was."

He didn't know what to say to that, how to react to it, how to even comprehend it. It had all seemed familiar to him last night before he went out to JJ's house but at that time he knew it was an irrational reaction as he knew Tobias was dead and once who he had expected to be a copycat turned out to instead be a demon, all thoughts of Tobias cleared from his mind. The connections instantly became irrelevant. Now he realized the effect was made with purpose and he didn't know why. Of course, what Bobby said about white-eyed demons playing with their prey could come into play here it still made no sense to pose as Tobias. Hankel was dead and it was his madness and subsequent brutality that had frightened him and still frightens him but not the man himself. If anything, at that moment, if the demon had posed as Genghis Khan the effect would be the same as _demon_ trumped _dead man_ on any given day.

"That is weird," Spencer muttered, not knowing how else to relate it.

Bobby watched him, knowing the name, knowing what the man with the name had done to him. The kid was almost as good at hiding his feelings as Dean was and Bobby was sure that wasn't a compliment. Dean sure as hell hadn't gotten it from his daddy. John Winchester was a boiling ball of raw and exposed emotion barely hidden under his drive to hunt. Though Bobby had never met Samuel Campbell, from what Diana had said of her father, he was a hard, silent man, who felt everything and said nothing. He was sure Dean and Spencer got their method of longsuffering silence from their grandpa.

Penelope hated the question before she even asked it. "Are you okay?"

"We have to go," Spencer said, trying and failing to plaster a smile on his lips.

* * *

Dawn was breaking over that flat stretch of farmland in the Virginian countryside. Diana Reid was fast asleep under the watchful eye of her nephew. Sam, _Samuel_ as he was now called by his new peers, didn't have a surname anymore. He wasn't referred to as _Winchester_ any longer. Every part of him, body and soul, belonged to Heaven and to God. Without their intervention, he would have long ago been swallowed by Lucifer and every thing that had been _him_ would have been forever erased.

Disappearing through the floor he entered the parlor and then moved out onto the porch. Sam looked out over the lightening landscape and took a long, deep and unnecessary breath. Like Anna who had burned in her grace and like Cas who had been destroyed by Raphael only to be pieced together again by God, Sam had been reborn in the body he'd died in. Where Cas would eventually forfeit the skin of Jimmy Novak, Sam was the only angel currently living in a body that was his own. As such he'd seen Castiel's true form without losing his eyes to incendiary fire. If he _could_ sleep, after seeing what Cas really looked like, he _wouldn't_ have for days after. Unlike how Dean had described demons in that time right before he was taken by the hellhounds, when his eyes were opened to the true darkness of evil, Cas was both beautiful as well as terrible. It took a while for Sam to see him again as Jimmy and he wondered how all of that awful magnificence could lock away into such a small human shell. Sam wondered what he now looked like under the skin he was born in. He wondered how much of him looked like Satan.

Something foul passed on a breeze and the muscles in his neck and shoulders tensed as his eyes scanned fast over the gray and greening land.

There was a man. He was an older man in overalls and who had a red-orange beard. He was just beyond the border of Cas' blue sigils. In his hands was a thick black metal chain that was strained taut and attached to nothing whatsoever but it was held hovering over and into the warding signs as if the invisible thing it was latched onto held no fear of the angelic symbols. Narrowing his eyes, Sam tapped into his power and he could see from afar that the man's eyes were a pure black. Like focusing lenses he looked beyond the physical world and the image of the black demonic aura spilling from every pore was like someone infested by thousands of misty snakes. At the end of the chain was the snarling thrashing image of a,

"_Hellhound_," Sam breathed the moment the man released the chain and the beast tore off towards the house at unimaginable speed. He would never forget them. The look, the smell. One week in Hell being torn apart by them was enough to send irrational fear through him. It couldn't hurt him now but he also could not fight it off by himself. Like reapers, hellhounds were agents of Death and no amount of wards and signs could keep death at bay.

A hellhound was definitely worth fall back position.

Sam blinked away from the porch and was up in Diana's room just as the doors downstairs were torn off their hinges. She startled up at the sound.

"What's happening?" She asked as he took her hand in his and said,

"We have to go."

They vanished just as the door to her room was ripped apart.

* * *

"Are you screwing with me?" Bobby asked, looking around Spencer's apartment as they walked through the front door. He was turning from wall to wall, taking in the prints and Spencer wondered what was wrong with the situation as their little group had just materialized on the roof of his building from out of thin air but pictures on the wall were what were amazing Bobby. Spencer still felt like he'd left his stomach back at the hospital.

To Bobby he gave a slightly more honest answer than what he'd given Garcia the night before. "The way my recall works means that I don't forget the things I see. I see a lot of things I'd like to forget but it's the nature of my job. Sensory overload," he gestured to the living room, "helps to suppress it. Not a lot—" _not enough_ "but it does what I need it to do."

Without additional comment, Bobby nodded. It was something blissfully _human_ for certain memories to fade and of all the things he had seen in his life, he was glad to have the progression of time dull all the edges. Spencer, however, wasn't afforded that . . . _blessing_, if it could be called that.

"Pack only what you need," Bobby said, taking up residence in the Chesterfield.

Following Spencer into the bedroom, Castiel took in the Renaissance art covering the walls and ceiling. "I missed this stage in human development but I find it curious."

Truly fascinated by all of Castiel's opinions, Spencer asked, "Curious or interesting?"

Looking up to the scene of the Sistine Chapel, Cas muttered, "I'm still deciding."

"Hmm," Spencer considered as he went through his closet. "Do you approve of art?"

"That's a strange question."

"I just wonder if Heaven in general approves of humans doing anything outside of worship."

"Art is worship."

Spencer frowned, turning to him. "I don't understand."

"The Bible humans adhere to is filled with omissions, misprints and direct contradictions added after the fact through political action. If you have a skill that benefits humanity, exercising it is a form of worship, whatever it is."

"What about direct forms of worship?"

"You mean participation in churches, temples, synagogues, mosques, etcetera? It's all pleasing as long as it doesn't impede other's beliefs. Once people believe their beliefs are the only valid ones, they no longer benefit humanity."

"But a person can't believe everything."

"No one person can." Cas turned to him and said, "I know of all the religions, past and present. There is not enough time in a human life to practice it all."

Shaking his head, Spencer said, "It's not what I meant."

"Clarify."

"What are the criteria for getting into Heaven?"

"Don't sell your soul to Hell."

His mouth dropped open. "That's it?"

"You expected more?"

Spencer considered the people he went after in the BAU and the things they had done. He didn't imagine very many went out of their way to sell their souls to Hell. The idea that George Foyet or Frank Breitkopf or any number of those who had terrorized and killed others were in a place of eternal happiness brought a shadow over him. Previously, when he didn't have any reason to believe in Heaven or Hell and death was just the end of life and it was the same for everyone, he was fine with that but to think that there was more beyond death and it was the paradise it was described as for everyone . . . it felt wrong.

Castiel saw his hesitation and said, "There are certain mortal sins that have to be forgiven for entrance to Heaven. Murder, bodily harm or spiritual anguish caused to another; there are levels of exclusion, teasing your little sister about her braces won't get you thrown into a pit of suffering, but with the work you do, I can say that in absence of contrition, Heaven has not accepted those you've sent along."

It was odd how that satisfied him. True contrition for terrible actions seemed to be the best gauge for a soul. Beyond that, everything else, once a person was dead, was unnecessarily punitive.

Bobby poked his head in from the living room, "How long does it take to pack a bag, boy?"

Spencer quickly turned and began pulling down any and everything he would need. He wasn't sure how long this would take and as much as he hoped it would be over soon, he made sure he had as much as he could carry as he artfully avoided the _Clothes from Derek_ box.

"So," he said over his shoulder to Cas as he avoided Bobby's exasperated stare, "There are white-eyed demons and red and yellow and black?"

"Two levels of white-eyed ones. Those with pupils and those without. The one you saw—"

"Was without."

"Highest level."

Spencer allowed that to pass through him. Taking a breath he asked, "And angelic hierarchy? Where do you fall?"

"I'm a third-level archangel. There were originally eighteen in the circle, three at the first level, six at the second and nine at the third but when Lucifer took a third of the angels from heaven with him—"

"The number went to twelve?" Castiel nodded. "And you're one of the twelve." Castiel nodded again and Spencer absorbed this. "Who are the other archangels and who were the ones that fell?"

"There have been some . . . _changes_ to the hierarchy these last few years but at the first level sat Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer."

"I can guess which one fell."

"Yes. Then Gabriel was killed and Michael is lost to us so there's been an upward shift in the ranks."

Spencer gaped, "The archangel Gabriel was killed? And how do you mean _lost_?"

Cas and Bobby exchanged glances before Cas replied, "It's a very long story. I'll explain it all later."

Seeing the reaction between them, Spencer knew that _long story_ likely didn't _begin_ to describe it. "Alright."

"The second level held Raphael, Azrael, Anael, Simiel, and Belial and Sonneillon are the ones who fell. On the third level was Phanuel, Ariel, Saraqael, Jeremiel, Barachiel, Jegudiel with Berith, Abaddon and Belphegor being the fallen."

Spencer observed, "I notice the absence of theophory in the names of the fallen ones."

"Their El names are no longer allowed to be used."

"Lucifer had an El name?" Spencer asked, having never heard that before.

"That name is burned away from all speech, even ours."

With more than a little trepidation Spencer saw that when God wrote you off he _literally_ wrote your name from existence. "So two of the second level archangels moved into Michael and Gabriel's place and so on and so forth and you took over for—"

"Ariel. She then took over for Anael who didn't move upward in the hierarchy but actually fell. Not with Lucifer but recently." Thinking of Anna, Cas shifted his gaze away and nodded, saying quietly, "She wanted things to be different. They are now but it was too late for her."

The obvious emotion within the angel was almost enough to stop Spencer's questions but there was something just burning in the back of his mind that only a few moments passed before he had to ask, "She? Her?"

"Yes?"

"It's just that, biblical scholarship implies that angels are all male."

Castiel did not seem at all impressed. "Those scholars also gender God. Only when speaking to you do we conform to the simplicities of human linguistics. We refer to _Him_ as _Father_ because our word doesn't translate. God is both male and female, mother and father. All human attempts to assign sex falls apart when it is also insisted that there is and can only be one sex in an entire race of beings. It makes the genderizing a moot point. Without function, how is there sex? Why give angels the reproductive qualities of males but at the same time feel it necessary to eliminate the female? Would reproductive organs be decorative? Do they believe we sustain ourselves through the consumption of food and thus we need pathways for waste removal?"

It was obvious Castiel was passionate about the topic and Spencer was _absorbed_. Most of his learning had been theory-based but this was pure fact flowing from the source. He knew he shouldn't be putting his clothes away so slowly but he was caught up in the moment and there was just so much more he wanted to know.

"So you do have distinct genders?"

"No, not really. We are asexual but we do have gender preferences. Both Anael and Ariel appreciated the feminine and so we referred to them as _her_ and _she_ dispute human efforts to label them _he_ and _him_."

"And you?" Spencer asked. He understood Bobby's explanation that the body Spencer was seeing was actually a man named Jimmy Novak and that angels, like demons, could occupy a human body but angels only could do so by explicit permission.

Castiel flexed his hand and touched his core, "I have not yet decided but male seems easiest. The last time I was on Earth I spent just over nine hundred years in the body of a female. She was the ancestress of my current host. I will tell you, getting ancient Greeks to listen to a gray-eyed, raven-haired virgin discuss the art of war craft and the love of God wasn't easy. They are quick to build a temple to you, but they will _not_ respect you."

Bobby blinked. "You were a girl for almost a _millennium_?"

"I got into some trouble for that," Cas grumbled.

"For what?" Spencer asked.

Cas folded his hands across his chest and mumbled, "I tried to stop them but they went ahead and named Athens after me—"

That couldn't be . . . that wasn't right . . . Spencer was sure he wasn't hearing right . . . "_Athena_? You—you were—"

"It is a time in my life I do not like to speak about," he said sharply, cutting off any further conversation.

Castiel's phone began to ring.

* * *

He didn't sleep at all that night. He'd wanted to shrug off everything that had to do with the fire and the events resulting from it but the sight of the unsub on top of Reid, choking the life from him kept playing over and over in his mind. He and Hotch had unloaded each of their clips into him and he didn't even respond. He even turned his head, eyes white as full cataracts and he smiled. The bullets did nothing to him. He shrugged them of like he was getting hit with water guns. Reid may have said he went down like every other unsub but he didn't.

Then there was the smoke. Was it let out because the unsub was dead or was he dead because that, whatever it was, left him?

Derek rubbed his eyes.

God. Was he afraid of sleeping now?

He needed to talk to someone and between Reid and Hotch, Derek was sure his next stop would be the hospital to hash this all out with the kid. He didn't even want to say what he thought that thing was and he was sure bullets didn't stop it. He wasn't even sure it was stopped at all. His mind kept going back to the smoke and the smile on the thing's face before the moment came out of it.

Was it gone or was it just playing them?

There was a knock at his door.

* * *

"A hellhound?"

"Yeah, Cas! A freaking hellhound!" Sam raged. "They didn't come after her to get her they came after her to _kill_ her!"

Spencer could hear the volume but he couldn't distinguish the words. All he knew was the person on the other end of the line was Castiel's apprentice, a younger angel, who was the one assigned to watch over his mother. Something happened and the only thing Cas would allow before all his focus went to the voice on the phone was that his mother was safe. Spencer wondered how he could assure that in any possible way if she was supposed to be safe from before. And did he really want to know if what his mind was supplying as the definition of _hellhound_ was the physical truth?

And . . . _cell phone_?

"They seem to be going after those closest to him," Castiel observed and Spencer's ears perked up.

Sam frowned, "Since when do coworkers count?"

"Since he's the godfather of her child."

"Uh, yeah, that counts."

"That's two failed attempts on the lives of people he has strong bonds with."

Spencer could logically deduce that they wouldn't stop. He was close to every single person on his team.

"We have to find out who they would go after next—" he heard Castiel say when Spencer's mind started making maps and connections on its own. Going after JJ first instead of his mother made sense not in terms of the strongest bond but in terms of proximity. The demon had planned this for at least days in advance since the moment his computer went down. The cameras in JJ's car were planted and the access to the traffic cameras was gained. This was a show and he was the star attraction and the scene being played out was one he was well familiar with. Even though he wasn't closest to JJ on his team, she and Henry played perfect props and their connection held deep religious significance.

His mother being the next one targeted made sense on the bond alone. Theatrics was put away for efficiency. They were in the mode now of making him suffer under the knowledge that she'd come so close to death. She was the only person to whom he told absolutely everything and he loved her with all he was.

Who would they go after next?

JJ for the symbolism.

His mother for their connection.

The next logical choice, and so far demons have proved mechanically logical, would be the one person in his life almost as close to him as his mother. The one person who, if they were suddenly gone, their loss would gut him completely.

_Derek_.

They were going after Morgan next.

* * *

"Who is it?" Derek asked, rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes as he made his way across his living room to the front door. He looked through the peephole to see a young brunette woman standing at his doorstep.

"Hi. Do you know Dr. Spencer Reid?" She asked.

"Who wants to know?" He asked, both amused and confused that a woman had shown up at _his_ place asking for the kid. No matter what, this had just become a story to tell.

She looked away, smiling. "I'll take that as a yes."

"You'll take that as a _who wants to know_."

Her eyes suddenly changed from brown to an all-encompassing black. "Meg wants to know."

* * *

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	9. What Is Seen Cannot Be Unseen

**Chapter Nine**

**What is seen cannot be unseen**

The roof landings were his personal hesitation. Fearing the stray computer tech or agent still lingering in his apartment had been the cause of his initial request that they appear on the roof of his building. Fearing again that he was wrong about the demons going after Derek next while at the same time _hoping_ he was wrong caused the same request for the same reasons. The image of Derek brushing his teeth or making breakfast only to look up and see a party of three appear from nothing and nowhere in the middle of his home gave Spencer an odd fluttering feeling of dread.

Maybe his reasoning was still deeply embedded in his own longstanding speculative nature that refused to be abated. Maybe he understood Derek's own deep-seated aversion to the supernatural too well. It all boiled down in the end to the fact that anyone, regardless of their faith or general open-mindedness to the unexplainable, who is in the middle of their morning routine, will surely panic upon seeing people imitate the Star Trek transporter in the center of their living room.

Perhaps if he hadn't been so fearful of scaring Morgan, they wouldn't have walked into his home only to see him taking his last choking breaths.

* * *

He made better than expected time. The Impala was taken to the edge of her speed limitations on the dark and empty highways and roads leading from Indiana to Virginia. He knew the speed traps and slowed only when he had to but when he was clear he punched her up to the red in the hope that the sooner he got to the job and got it done this would all be over. Once over he would go home and live his life.

His life. Heh, when the hell did that happen? To the man who had never had a life of his own before, it was a precious thing. Precious and fragile. A wrong move, a wrong choice could throw everything out of sync, out of place. Never before in his life had he been 100% happy with everything he had and though there was regret and loss permeating every part of his current existence, he could honestly say that of all the things he didn't have and of all the people he'd lost along the way, that small house in Cicero that smelled of burning rubbery old lady was the only place he'd picture once he was dead and gone and he was finally allowed to dream up his own heaven.

Dean Campbell watched the sun rise and simply wished the day that had just begun would just be over.

* * *

He couldn't stop it. As much as he wanted to, what he saw instantly became a memory he would never forget. His eyes let in, his mind absorbed and the sight was immortalized. What he saw became a part of him, forever.

_I know what it's like to be afraid of your own mind_.

He couldn't understand the blood. The human body only held seven . . . no, eight . . . wait, too much . . . liters or gallons or . . . too much. There was too much on the walls and the floor and not enough left in the body. The body.

I can't.

Too much.

Derek.

Part of him was on one wall and the other part was on the wall opposite. There was a length of intestine that linked the two halves and . . . and . . . there was writing but his mind kept taking snapshots and not moving or functioning, just remembering and remembering and he didn't want to see this. He couldn't be seeing this. Like a fire of synapses he saw the words painted on the walls but he couldn't read it. That part of cognition was in a separate part of the brain and it was less automatic than . . . did you know? Did you know it was . . . it was . . . different?

Too much.

He blinked.

He blinked.

The sunshine was pouring over him and he was in the small lawn area in front of Derek's condo. It wasn't much of a lawn. Ten feet by five it was just a section of grass and a lonely tree. He was sitting with his head between his knees, the grass staining the pants Derek had bought him for . . . Christmas? His birthday . . . wait. Breathe. What? He curled over and his painfully empty stomach retched water and nothing else.

1.3 gallons of blood in the human body but when it was sprayed thin it seemed like so much more.

So much more.

He was breathing.

What?

"Spencer!" Bobby was shaking him and Spencer looked up to his face. There was a smudge of blood just above his beard. It was Derek's blood. Spencer gripped his head as it spun and he braced close to his folded knees. He was seeing it. It played over and over and he couldn't stop seeing it.

"He was breathing!" Bobby shouted and the only thing Spencer latched onto was the past tense of _to be_ which was no longer _is_ but rather _was_. The dead are _was_ Dead. Was.

He could smell it, it was lodged in his nostrils and it hung heavy in an aura over his hair. Blood and stomach acid and bile.

"He's fine, he's gonna be fine! Cas—"

"There's no _fine_ after that," Spencer moaned, his head in his palms, his body rocking just slightly forward and backward. Rolling up to his feet, he stumbled a little before gaining his balance.

"Boy, listen to me—" Bobby grabbed him by the shoulders. "He's alive. He's up there and he's _fine_." Spencer shivered. For August it was surprisingly cold. "He was breathing. He was still alive. Cas fixed him up."

Nothing was making sense. Bobby's lips were moving but his voice was only spitting nonsense. How could anyone use the word _fine_ to describe the aftermath of _that_? His best friend had been in two pieces and his insides were spilling out onto the floor. _Breathing_? The last twitches of death cannot be in the same category as breathing. Every time Spencer closed his eyes he could see him . . . like that.

"Spencer—"

"There is no fine after that!" Spencer screamed, pushing Bobby's hands off of him. He didn't want to be touched. He didn't want to feel anything like comfort against his skin. The world was all wrong now and it was never going to be the same.

Taking a step on weak legs, Spencer's hand swung out and held fast to wall as he slid down it, his body rocking with sobs. He didn't know how much time passed when he felt two fingers press against his temple and everything went dark and his body doubled over, limp.

When his eyes opened again, he was in his apartment lying in his bed, facing one of Michelangelo's oracles. His head was pounding. Migraines he was used to but this was like he'd been locked inside a strobe light that had doubled as a basketball. His contacts burned. Rolling up he grabbed the empty case that sat at his side table and slipped the lenses from his eyes. A pair had been removed after the fire and Garcia had brought this spare set to the hospital. Now he deposited them in the case and fished his glasses from the top drawer. Rubbing his eyes before he slipped them on, he massaged his temples.

He knew he was sitting there, in the chair just to the foot of the bed but he couldn't bring himself to look in his direction. He was afraid. He was a grown man afraid of a phantom memory.

"How you feeling, kid?"

Spencer adjusted his glasses and finally turned to him. There was no blood, no bite marks, no scratches. Nothing. But when Spencer blinked, it all came back to him.

He quickly averted his eyes.

"I don't have a right to that," he mumbled, his voice painfully low. "How are you?" From the time on the clock, Spencer could see almost two hours had passed. Two hours worth of silence.

"Considering . . ." Derek began, but he couldn't finish. "I don't remember all of it, the worst of it. It's weird. Cas keeps erasing the memory when it starts to come back. I don't know how he knows but he does." If Spencer could dare envy him that, he'd also have to be fair and envy what happened to him to begin with. "Bobby," Derek gestured to the closed bedroom doors, "he explained everything." He exhaled. "It was . . ." He wiped his face with his hand and said, "_out there_. But I believe him. I have to. I can't remember what happened from A to B but it did happen, I know that, and I know what would have happened if you all came a minute later."

"I didn't want you to—"

"No, kid, _that_ I get and trust me, after all this I'd be happy in a cesspool of ignorance right about now."

"You want me to, um, to get you something?"

Derek sniffed, a bitter grin crossing his features. "I've never felt better in my life," he said. Looking down to his hands which just a few hours ago had been missing a few fingers he asked, "What the hell does that even _mean_, you know?"

Nodding, Spencer quietly replied, "It means you were healed by an angel." They sat in silence after that, neither saying a word for a long while. "You should sleep—" Spencer finally said, remembering himself and scrambling quickly from the bed while gesturing to it.

"I'm probably not gonna sleep for the rest of my life."

"I doubt that," he muttered, walking behind Derek's chair and extending his hand to lay a grip on his shoulder when the blood filled his vision again. He drew his hand sharply back and went to the doors. "Sleep," he said before leaving the room, sliding the doors closed behind him. He moved to the wall, out of Derek's line of sight and he leaned his back against a few frames there and just tried to keep breathing.

The living room was empty. There was noise coming from the kitchen and with a dedicated push off the wall, he walked with heavy feet to the welcoming scent of fresh coffee.

"Did he kiss you?" Bobby asked with a grumble, pushing a steaming cup into Spencer's hands.

Bobby Singer was the king of the non sequitur. "What?" He asked, his hands blindly reaching over and grabbing the sugar bowl.

"The Sleeping Beauty act lasted longer than Cas expected; he couldn't stay and wait. Desperate times, desperate measures."

Desperate times. Yeah.

Bobby poured himself a cup and settled in around the small table with a yawn.

"Sorry," Spencer said, sliding in across from him. The morning sun coming in through the window over the sink betrayed the feeling of the moment. He never appreciated pathetic fallacy in literature but it seemed obscene that a morning could be so beautiful after hosting the scene of destruction it had only a few hours earlier. "That's never happened before . . . I mean, not like that. It should probably worry me but from the list that's being compiled, that's at the end of it."

"You've blanked out like that before?"

Taking a sip of not-sweet-enough-coffee he shrugged. "Twice. The term _frozen in shock_ is apropos. The last time it happened was when I tried to talk a man down from killing a kid. He was a teen and he did a really bad thing but he was still, you know, a person, a kid. I wanted to get through to the shooter, I didn't want to fire on him because up to that point he'd been a victim but I couldn't stop him. What he did just kept repeating. I was . . . stuck for a moment. Having that happen with an armed assailant just a few feet from you is bad." He shook his head. "This was worse."

Bobby reached over and took the sugar bowl. In a small gesture he tossed two spoonfuls into Spencer's mug and slid it away. "Watching a stranger get shot isn't the same as seeing someone you know have . . . _that_ done to them," Bobby said, the image passing through his own memory but gratefully, not as crisply as he was sure it was passing through Spencer's. It was the Black Dahlia live and in color. "Your momma talks about him almost as much as she talks about you."

Of course she did, Spencer thought. As much as he had begged his mother to cut off all ties to Bobby Singer, Diana Reid had absolutely refused. They were the closest thing to best friends either had and before his mother's stay at Bennington she had been the hunting world's foremost otherworldly anthropologist and Bobby's mentor. All this he'd found out later in his life when Bobby found out what he'd done, where he'd sent her. His words were colorful and only served to bolster Spencer in his choice of removing his mother from the influence of the people around her, who, he had been sure, were feeding her delusions. But she wouldn't cut Bobby off and as much as Spencer wrote to her, she in turn wrote to Bobby.

He had always regretted his choice, for her sake, but he'd always felt it had been necessary. He now wondered how much of the last two days would have happened if he'd just believed Bobby that day over a decade ago.

He slipped off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Headache?"

"Yes."

"He's gonna be okay."

"I saw," Spencer said, his eyes still closed. "But he . . ." There was a flash of memory, a familiar face. Skin chalky and ashen. The inhales he took were the last gasps of the motor function of his brain shutting down and his exhales were ragged with voiceless pain. Sweat and tears mingled with bright red. Above it in an arc was a message painted in a mixture of it all—

All of his lingering hesitation and doubt was gone. The night before had been an insight, what happened to JJ was a taunt and what almost happened to his mother was a threat but this was real. This was reality. This was everything it had threatened to be but he thought it couldn't be. This was worse than his worst imaginings and his illusions were stripped away. Gone. There was no theological abstraction here. This was no ideological war between the tenets of morality versus immorality or even the simpler idea of good versus evil.

This was Derek pinned in pieces to his living room walls like a dead butterfly.

And Bobby was right, as always. The only thing that could help them was Heaven.

". . . he'll never be the same." The words were spoken not just for his friend but also for himself.

The arc of blood flashed before his eyes. _What is seen cannot be unseen_.

* * *

Angels and demons and the whole fucking world flipped on its axis. He was lying on Reid's bed, flopped above the thin summer sheets and he blankly stared at the images above him. As bad as an artist could imagine it, it was still miles away from reality. Hell, as a _thought_, was rendered with the limits of the human imagination but Derek had seen evil, he didn't dream it up and decorate it with flames for extra dramatic punch. There was no old man on a river. There was no idiotic idea of a big Bacchanal for sinners to keep on sinning aided by blood red tequila. These were the ideas of Hell bandied around by the faithful and the faithless to justify the actions they took in their lives but he had _seen_ evil. He had _felt_ it. He'd looked right into her eyes and felt her tongue on his neck as she bit a piece of him away. She was unforgiving and relentless with her eyes, the windows to her soul, as hollow as the yawning mouth of a bottomless pit. Nothing in his life had prepared him for the moment evil came through his door.

End of summer and his only neighbors were doing a loop around the Caribbean. There had been no one to hear his screams. He'd been at the end of his life and there was no one there. There was nothing, no hope for him to hold onto. Pain and loneliness and fear were his only companions. For all the random connections he'd made in his life, for all the women and the passion that had filled most of his nights, in the end, in the morning, he was alone. The last thing he could remember seeing was her smile as she used his insides as tinsel.

It was then that he understood what Penelope had told him up in Alaska: that desire in her to make sure the last thing a dying man saw was a kind face. He understood the worth of that now and God . . . what he wouldn't have done for that.

He hadn't had a willingness or an opportunity to thank God for much of anything in some years but when he opened his eyes again and he saw, after begging for it to stop and after pleading for whatever it was inside of him to just shutdown and leave to escape the pain, the solemn blue eyes in a face etched with concern he thanked Him for that. He was still sure he was dying but it was still a better image to die with. Concern over a glee-filled expression. Compassion over delight in destruction. But he didn't die. He supposed that was an even better reason to be grateful.

Glancing to the center of the room, he saw the image of God floating on a zephyr about to touch life into man and Derek Morgan closed his eyes and finally stopped asking where salvation was if it even existed. It did exist; it was right there with him and nothing would ever be the same.

* * *

They were supposed to wait for Cas. He was apparently organizing protection for the rest of Spencer's team in the form of guardians. Before Castiel moved up in the ranks he was a guardian, a class of angel below archangels. It was in this function that he had first met Bobby but Spencer could sense how Bobby had bypassed and avoided inquiries into who Cas had been assigned to. Each member of his team would get one and for some reason Bobby mentioned Cicero, Indiana as well but Spencer didn't understand the reference. Once Cas returned they would all head back to the fall back location, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. His mother was there with Castiel's apprentice.

"How is that a safer location for her than where you had her before?" He asked, not expecting the shadow of sadness that fell over Bobby's face.

"The only thing they have that can get through angels is the hellhounds but I've got some powerful Juju in the form of hex bags all around the place."

"How is that more powerful than an angel?" Spencer couldn't grasp how bags could top the power he'd seen Castiel exert.

"Physical and used by the living, they ward off those things man was given spiritual power over. We were given power over death and the grave—"

"That was supposed to be a literal interpretation?"

"It's funny: the things that read literally are figurative and the flouncy poetic feel-goody kind of language is stone cold literal."

"So your house is protected from hellhounds? Isn't that a little _over_ prepared, Bobby?"

He rubbed his beard and that shadow darkened. "A while back my town had some . . . zombie trouble . . ." The words left him and they conjured up an image of his wife before his vision. Karen's smile, her dancing eyes, her kindness. The hole he made in her skull. He shivered. "We didn't want to deal with that again so we all made the bags and sealed them. Sioux Falls is now revenant-proof. If somebody dies we have to cart them over the city limits just so the reapers can get to them. It's a hassle and try explaining _that_ to visitors but its damn well worth it."

Spencer's brow was in a tight knot. "The _entire_ town?"

"When you have a few hundred people fill up a football field praying over a couple thousand hacky sacks you get magic that can move mountains." And off of Spencer's still perplexed look, Bobby chuckled, "Boy, how in the hell do you think Stonehenge was built?"

It wasn't often he was asked academic questions he didn't have the answers to. Of course it would work out this way that no one but Bobby Singer would know how Stonehenge was really built.

Spencer checked in on Derek and saw him sleeping. He hoped he wouldn't dream. Bobby was stretched out on the Chesterfield and Spencer had to smile as he sat on his stool. He never had reason to regret not owning a couch until that moment.

Bobby's phone vibrated at his side. It was Dean. Damn it. He'd completely forgotten. The morning had proved more _involved_ than he had expected.

"Yeah? . . . outside?" Bobby jumped up out the chair and looked out the living room window down to the street where a familiar black Chevy Impala was rounding a corner, sliding into a parking space. "Only you'd get here a goddamn hour early . . . what?" He asked, seeing Dean emerge from the car and come up to the building, his phone in his hand. "Nothing . . . yeah." Bobby went to the intercom and buzzed the downstairs door open. Spencer watched all of this with curiosity. "Yeah, okay," he said, hanging up.

"Who's here?"

_Shit_ . . . meet fan.

"Boy, listen, don't panic—"

Now Spencer's face was wiped of all question and was replaced with concern. "Who is it?"

There was a knock at the door.

"God damn it," Bobby swore, going to the front door and peeping through the hole. He looked to Spencer, "Long story short, I lied to you about what happened. He wasn't in the building when it went up, okay?"

"What—"

Bobby opened the door.

There was an audible intake of air on both sides of the wall.

"Dean?"

"Poindexter?"

For the second time in as many hours, Spencer Reid was witness to the dead coming back to life. They stood across from the other wearing their shock in mutual expressions of surprise. A sudden flash of anger and resentment in one melted away to nothing as the arms of the other was thrown around him. Bobby's hurried words began to make sense even if the situation seemed to make absolutely none.

"I thought you were dead," Spencer exhaled, clutching onto him. Memories, emotions, everything he thought he had buried that day he was told that Sam and Dean Winchester had died while in FBI custody came bubbling to the surface.

Dean's arms were limp in Spencer's grip and he only managed a momentary glare in Bobby's direction before he remembered why he was mad at the kid in the first place. The reasons, he remembered, became crap a long time ago. Between Heaven and Hell and plans and destiny, those three years Sam had spent at Stanford was absolutely needed. Dean didn't know what he would do without these last three _months_ with Lisa and Ben. Could he really be pissed at the kid for allowing Sam to have something of a normal life and the opportunity of love with Jess in an existence book-ended by hunting ghosts and having the fucking Apocalypse on his shoulders? Now that Sam was gone, Dean was glad for every single second of normalcy his brother had away from their world and the only reason he'd had a chance at it was because of the kid squeezing the life from him at that very moment. Once upon a time he was pissed as all hell but now, at the end of it all, he was grateful.

"The old man tell you that?" He asked, finally returning the hug. Glaring at Bobby again, but this time for not telling him that the job was _Spencer_, he said, "You're the only one who still listens to his bullshit." Bobby now mirrored his glare.

Spencer Reid wasn't a physical person. If he could avoid bodily contact at any given time, he would. He only broke his own personal restrictions when he was caught up in an unconscious moment resulting from great stress or happiness. Never before had he experienced both at the same time and he surprised even himself. Releasing Dean he could feel the smile on his face warming his cheeks when just moments ago he was sure he would never smile like this again. The human creature was so odd and contrary and wonderful.

"You were never going to tell me?"

"Not _never_," Dean said stepping into the apartment. "When you started believing in ghosts and goblins then, yeah." Looking to the walls he nodded, casually appraising the scene. "Heh," he said, pointing to the prints. "Constellations?"

He remembered. Spencer nodded with a shrug, "Yeah. I can't believe you remember that."

"Hey, you're not the only one with the half decent memory."

Closing the door, Bobby looked to them both. "Constellations?"

Spencer and Dean turned to him and then glanced to each other. They didn't reply, obviously keeping a secret.

Bobby held his hands up, shaking his head, "Whatever."

_1992_

"I've got a job in Vegas," John Winchester said, packing out his clothes from the drawers to the duffel. Looking to thirteen year old Dean and nine year old Sammy, John had come to expect certain reactions when he told his children to uproot whatever fragile foundations they had started to build in any given location. Dean would shrug and start packing while Sammy would protest, and _loudly_, about the necessity of them having to follow him, arguing that they could take care of themselves. Dean would shut that talk down mighty quickly and by the time John was packed and ready, his boys would be too. They each had their own way of coping with the life he had thrust on them. Dean wouldn't bother making any real connections knowing they wouldn't last. Sammy would try and make friends with any and everyone hoping they _would_ last. Both were destructive for their own reasons. Dean would never allow true companionship and Sammy would be constantly faced with abandonment.

But Vegas was always different.

"Can we stay with Spencer?"

"I need help with my math."

"Do you think Auntie Diana will read to us?" The same way they called Bobby _uncle_ was the same way they grew up calling Diana _aunt_ but they never knew the truth behind it.

John knew that Diana's was the only place the boys truly felt at home and it was no wonder; she was a half of who they were, whether they knew it or not. Sammy would never fight him on a proposed trip to Vegas and Dean never had to cover up a forlorn expression with a cocky shrug and an empty smile.

"Guess who's coming for a couple of days?" Diana Reid asked her son. Watching the light flash in Spencer's eyes was enough of an incentive for her to roll out of bed and thumb through her medication. John couldn't see her like this. He didn't know how to keep his god damn mouth shut and from his lips to Bobby's ears and that was _just_ what she didn't need.

Without a single question, eleven year old Spencer was already halfway to his room to get ready for Dean and Sammy. They'd known each other for as long as they could remember, their parents connected somehow but they would never elaborate. Spencer never pressed his mom for details. At eleven, despite being a high school junior, he was still a kid who craved the companionship of boys his own age who didn't have preformed ideas about him. Dean and Sammy were practically a part of his family and since his dad left the year before, their visits were the only bright points in his life when on one side he had his mom's sickness and on the other he had a school filled with kids who resented him for just being who he was.

Dean was in junior high and Sammy was still in elementary so the first thing Uncle John always absolutely insisted on was getting them out to the library. He slipped Spencer a ten to help them with their school work and to an eleven year old, a ten dollar bill was pure gold. Dean would grumble, Sammy would already have his book bag packed to bursting and Spencer would hike them out under the Nevadan sun to the local library.

Tall for his age, Spencer still didn't rival Dean's height. Everyone was sure Dean would be as big as his dad when he topped out. Sammy was small, round and bookish. He had a thirst for knowledge that rivaled Spencer's.

"I wish _I_ was a genius," Sammy pouted, breathing heavily as he followed far behind the two bigger boys.

"Kiss my ass," Dean groaned under the burning sun. "Between the two of you, I might as well be a vegetable."

Spencer rolled his eyes, "Please."

"What?"

"Dean, what was the number one movie of 1987?"

"Wait, are we talking box office or critically 'cause we had Robocop, The Princess Bride, Lethal fucking Weapon, Predator, The Untouchables—"

"Yep," Spencer nodded, feeling vindicated. "You know all that but you still can't tell me who the second president was."

"Who the hell even cares? Last time I checked, guy was dead. Dude, _Robocop_."

Sammy snorted from behind, "Dad calls him Rain Man."

Dean turned around like he would pop his baby brother in the face.

Spencer grabbed Dean and pulled him forward. "He's two feet tall, come on."

Rolling his eyes, Dean huffed. "Movies are different. Music is different. I _like_ that stuff. What the hell am I ever using a parabola for?"

"Well, you might want to be an engineer one day—"

Dean laughed. He couldn't help it. He never laughed when his guidance counselors had long talks with him about his '_future_' because his dad warned him about copping his attitude around school officials who had the power to ask too many questions but he always had to laugh when Spencer mentioned it. The way Dean saw it he didn't have one outside of hunting. This life was it for him. He just had to get the hell past high school and get his own car. That was his future. Spencer was different. His mom wanted his life to be different and with his brain it _should_ be. Their dad had already told them both to keep mum on what they did, on what his mom did. Sometimes Dean wondered about the kid. He was so smart but didn't even recognize the world in motion all around him.

"—You can fix pretty much anything with moving parts. You built a tape player from old speakers and a magnet—"

Dean grinned, "That _was_ pretty sweet." He really had his eyes set on building a homemade EMF next.

"And, okay, maybe not trig right now but your math is excellent—"

"Yeah, every two or three months when we swing by for you to help me out with it."

"But you get it fast—"

"Cause my teachers suck and you don't," Dean countered. "You can teach a blind guy how to play tennis. I'm not gonna be an engineer. _Engines_, that's what I'm doing, okay? My dad's a mechanic, I'm gonna be a mechanic. It's the family business."

Whenever Dean whipped out _the family business_ Spencer stopped pushing. There was nothing he could say to counter that. How could he tell Dean to defy his dad? He saw Dean had the ability but he didn't have the initiative, not for school. It had been decided a long time ago that school was just a way to pass the time for him.

"I don't wanna be a mechanic," Sammy piped up from behind, knowing what _mechanic_ really meant. Spencer turned to him. Sammy wasn't math or figures like Dean was. He wasn't all that good with his hands but his brain was sharp and he could twist arguments all around anyone who didn't expect it.

Dean glared at his little brother but said nothing. Sammy actually had a chance to think about his future and as much as Dean wanted that for him, he knew he couldn't do this life alone and live like their dad. Sammy didn't remember their mom; she was a fairytale to him. He didn't understand what the fight was about. Dean sometimes wished he could see his mother's memory laid to rest but then the nights came by when he would dream about her. He would remember her face, her smile. He would remember the days following the fire when the image of her on Sammy's nursery ceiling would run on a loop in his head as clear as when he first saw it. Those were the days when he didn't speak. He scared his dad but he didn't even know he was stuck. He just stayed in that moment over and over. Sammy was lucky. He was a baby when it happened. What he saw, he'd already forgotten. She didn't haunt him.

"What do you want to be?" Spencer asked, turning a corner on the boulevard leading to the library.

"Umm . . ." he didn't need long to think about it, "I wanna be Matlock!"

Dean scrunched up his nose, "A lawyer?" That was no where _near_ hunting. Leave it to Sammy to be the complete opposite of everything they ever knew.

"Hmm," Spencer said. Social sciences weren't his area of specialty. He wasn't good with . . . _people_. His mom would of course say people weren't good with _him_ but he knew she, as his mom, was pretty much programmed to say stuff like that. "Well, if you want to stay on the coast you can try Stanford. I'm taking a few classes there in the summer."

Sammy's mouth made a perfect O. The possibility that he could go to a school Spencer went to was absolutely blowing his mind. Dean could see it in his eyes and a weird mixture of pride, guilt, happiness and jealousy mixed inside of him. The jealousy quickly died away. He was used to Sammy not looking up to him in that way anymore. If he was gonna idolize anyone's brains, it damn well _should_ be Spencer.

"Is that where you're going to school?" Sammy asked. Dean rolled his eyes. Even _he_ knew better than that.

"Um . . . no, I'm aiming for Cal Tech but it doesn't have a lot of social science options. My mom's insistent that I learn a few things about," he sighed, quoting her, "_the dark recesses of the human psyche_."

Dean snorted. "Nice."

Spencer punched him. He might as well have fanned him. Dean's arm was like rock.

Sammy frowned, "But I wanna go to your school."

"Kid, it's a school for astronauts, not _lawyers_." Dean fell back and tousled Sammy's hair, "Besides, by the time you're a freshman, Poindexter here's gonna be like a doctor three times over. He'll prolly teach classes before he's even sixteen."

"Don't call me Poindexter," Spencer said, opening up the door to the library. "And I'm not going to be a professor. I mean, I'll have to teach when I get to graduate school but," he didn't want to say he didn't want to do what his mother did so he just shrugged and mumbled, "Maybe engineering."

That caught Dean. It struck him in a funny place that Spencer would think he could ever do something he could do, on any level. He would go on and on about the things Dean could accomplish in his life if he just focused but it only just struck Dean that Spencer hadn't been blowing smoke up his ass the whole time. Not like he wasn't being sincere or nothin' just, kinda like how he saw other kid's parents and big siblings lie to them saying they could be doctors or CEOs when the kids could barely tie their own shoes at twelve. It was a family thing and Spencer was family but he was seriously being honest the whole time. He _really_ thought Dean could do half the shit he said he could. It was weird having someone that smart actually have real faith in him. His dad wasn't really all that _expressive_ on that front when Dean had his accomplishments and when Dean didn't manage to do something _right on the letter_ it was like he never did anything right in his entire life. Sammy took his dad's cue in that respect and as much as they leaned on him to keep everything together, they never noticed how much he worked at it, how much he succeeded at it, how much their family relied on him as the linchpin that held everything together. Sammy easily slid into the comfort zone of being the _smart one_. He never asked for help with his school work anymore and it kinda . . . hurt. But Spencer was different. He saw him differently.

"I guess I'm not sure yet," Spencer said.

He had so many possibilities before him. He could be anything, do anything. His mom always told him that. She wanted big things for him. She told him she didn't want him to end up like her. That threw a cloud over him, like she was saying it was possible for him to get as sick as she was. He never knew the true meaning behind her words. He wondered what it was like to be Dean with his whole future already mapped out for him from birth. Part of him was scared of that, to feel so locked in and immobile but another part of him almost craved how clean it was. How easy. What if his family had a _family business_? He'd be able to fast track whatever it was, get it done and just settle into his _life_. Yes, the idea was almost intoxicating.

He pictured someone like his Uncle John walking into his world with his quiet gruffness just opening his eyes to a future he never before considered and setting the direction of his life like a needle in a compass. He had always pictured that person as an avatar of his Uncle: dark hair, firm voice, grey and weathered around the edges. When Jason Gideon walked into his classroom almost ten years later, it was exactly as he had imagined it. Spencer had never believed in fate until that moment and he never believed in fate for any event following it.

"Afternoon, Spencer," a small man with a bright smile said as he rounded a corner around the circulation desk.

"Doc, hey!" Spencer said. Turning to his friends he said, "Dean, Sammy, this is my English teacher, Dr. Shur—" Spencer stopped speaking when he saw that the pendant Dean always wore around his neck was . . . _glowing_ white hot. "Dean—"

The front doors of the library suddenly burst open and all the window shades arched up on a powerful breeze. The entire library was filled with a momentary blast of blinding white light and everyone was in commotion as papers went flying every which way. It all settled down a moment later and when Spencer turned back to Dean the pendant was just as it always was. Spencer frowned, positive he had seen it glow, remembering exactly how it looked but no one else seemed to have noticed so he pushed it out of his mind assuming it had been a weird reflection.

"Doc?" Dean said, holding out his hand.

The little bearded man smiled and shook his hand, "I keep telling Spencer he can just call me Chuck, but he never does—"

"Calling him Doc is as informal as I can get with a teacher," Spencer said quite perplexed.

Chuck sighed rubbing his beard, "Uh huh. This kid has read more than I did all my years at university but somehow _I'm_ supposed to be _his_ teacher. This school's on crack."

Dean liked this guy.

"See you later, boys," he said, waving from the exit. All three waved him goodbye.

"He's pretty cool," Dean said.

"Oh yeah. He's the one who suggested California." Spencer shrugged. "My mom was set on MIT but I don't want to go to school so far from her but I can't tell her that. Doc's certain I'd do well at Cal Tech."

They settled into a table and got to work. It took less than half an hour to untangle the mess of confusion Dean's various teachers had laid in his brain and soon he was mapping out parabolas, hyperbolas, circles and ellipses without any effort.

"See? They suck, you don't," Dean said drawing a graph for a sine wave.

"Dean, you just learned geometry and trig in twenty minutes."

"Yeah, but ask me how long I've been _trying_ to learn it."

Spencer's mouth opened and then closed. He couldn't argue that. He realized maybe Dean would make it as a lawyer too.

"So, what are you reading?" Spencer asked him, knowing it was the last question Dean wanted to hear. As adept at math as Dean was, he hated books with the fire of Hades.

"It doesn't matter, I'm not going back to that school," Dean hummed, mapping out an equation that would draw one of his most favorite things on Earth. Spencer glanced at the half-formed equation and drew it in his mind.

"Pac Man?"

Beaming, Dean nodded, "You know it."

Spencer rolled his eyes. Yep, his application was completely skewed but his aptitude was off the charts. Mechanic his ass. "Come on, reading list," he said, making a _gimme_ with his hands.

Dean sighed. "They mixed up my classes, _again_. I ended up in some advanced class, I don't even know. We were supposed to be on _The Odyssey_ now. I bumblefucked through _The Iliad_ already."

"Did you like it?" Spencer asked, afraid of the answer.

Dean looked at him like he was crazy, "Okay, I _get_ starting a war over a chick, fine, whatever. But you have Achilles, best warrior you've got, and you go and take his woman 'cause you just _like_ being a jackass? Then he ends up playing a harp in his tent or some other bullshit, it ends weird, you don't even see the rest of the war, and then my teacher says Achilles ends up dead 'cause he got a fucking arrow in the fucking foot? What? Hell _no_ I didn't like it. Most messed up shit I _ever read_. I got to the end and couldn't _wait_ to burn that bitch in the backyard."

Spencer laughed _uncontrollably_. He had to clamp his mouth shut. He hated making noise in the library but for god sakes he hadn't laughed that hard in a long time. On one had he wanted to be appalled at the idea of Dean burning a book, on the other hand was the very image of Dean burning a book . . ._ because he hated the ending._

Well, at least he knew he had read it.

"I'll go get you a copy of _The Odyssey_."

Dean bent over the desk and banged his head against the tabletop.

Sammy quirked his lips to the side and reached over, "You okay?"

Dean groaned.

Sammy shrugged and went back to his reading.

"Okay," Spencer said, sliding into his chair. Dean stopped being surprised with how fast Spencer could find stuff in the library. He practically owned the place. The librarians knew him by name and asked him questions they should damn well know the answers to but didn't. _Adults_.

Dean looked at the volume in his hand and he banged his head on the table again. That was a big ass book. "Don't do that, it's good."

"Dude, after the last one, the only Homer I like is Simpson."

"Come on," he said pulling Dean's chair over. Waggling his brows, Spencer said, "I've got one word for you: _Sirens_—"

"Ooo," came a set of voices from behind them. Spencer's eyes closed for a second as he recognized them. Dean watched his expression and frowned. Turning, he caught sight of three huge guys, probably seventeen or eighteen walk over from another part of the library. Bleach blonde and tanned, they looked like the cookie cutter version of the same catalogue ad for surfboards even though Nevada was landlocked. "Yo, Reid, that your new boyfriend?" One of the guys asked.

Spencer didn't reply, he just mentally shrugged them off and ignored them, keeping his eyes on the book. Dean gave a small snort and nodded to himself. If Spencer could be above their bullshit, no reason he had to muck himself up in it either. He turned back to the book ignoring them too.

"Huh," the same guy said, rounding around on them and plopping down on the empty seat across from Sammy. He looked to Dean, knowing he wouldn't get to Spencer despite years of trying. "The runt's your tutor or something?"

Dean's face remained the same.

"I'm talking to you."

There was so much he wanted to say to that. Most had to do with lapsed dental hygiene but he was on Spencer's turf and he wasn't going to cause any waves.

"That a little too thick for you, isn't it?" He said gesturing to the book, his friends chuckling behind them. He looked around, "There's gotta be an ABC book around here for the retards."

Spencer Reid never '_took up arms,_' so to say, for himself. He didn't feel the need to. He was perfectly secure in his own intelligence to identify when people lashed out from their own sense of inferiority and position of ignorance. His mother enjoyed poking holes in their egos whenever she could but he often pitied them. He saw potential in many and knew that somewhere along the way they had given up focusing on themselves and their own advancement and started focusing on others trying to halt theirs. It baffled him mostly. For example, the guy that was talking to them just then, Philip McCray, he was a senior who unfortunately still functioned with a freshman's brain but because he could run fast with a ball in his hand, he'd be off to college soon with a football scholarship. The first sidelining injury he suffered would be the end of him but he couldn't see that. He thought he was king of the world at eighteen years old. There was a lot to feel sorry for.

But . . .

Spencer could sense Dean's straining self-control as he withstood the words from a guy five years older and half a foot taller than him. He also knew those weren't the reasons Dean was staying silent. Spencer had seen Dean practice his hand-to-hand with his Uncle John in those minutes just after sunrise when everyone thought he was sleeping. He knew how fast he was, how strong he was and he knew Dean's temper. The only reason he was still quiet was because Spencer was and it was weird how much that meant to him.

But . . .

No one got off saying that to Dean. While Spencer appreciated his self-control, his own was already out the window.

"You know what Phil?" Spencer asked, finally turning towards him. "I honestly don't believe that intelligence can be quantified but I'm pretty sure you're a moron . . . and a _jackass_."

Sammy's jaw fell open and Dean's eyes lit, his tongue pushing through his teeth as he flashed a huge and unrestrained smile. Phil, on the other hand, lost all pretense of good humor.

"You little—" he began, reaching for Spencer's shirt when Dean's hands moved like lightning and in two moves, the football team's star quarterback was face down on the floor, Dean Winchester's boot was at the back of his neck and Phil's throwing arm was twisted up in Dean's palm. He squealed in pain and the entire library was looking their way.

Dean shrugged down at him, "Let's go, _bitch_."

One of the other guys tried to rush Dean from the side when Sammy Winchester dropped down under the table like he was made of all cartilage and he popped up on the other side. He crouched low and fast and swung out his leg, clipping the other guy at his shins and sent him toppling over. Sammy stood over him and said with his tiny voice, "Let's go . . ." he blushed, knowing he couldn't say _that_ ". . . jerk."

"Phillip McCray, Dustin Abernathy," the librarian said from the desk, pointing them over. "We're calling your parents right now. Get over here." She looked to the third friend who held up his hands and shrugged, zipping away and through the exit. "Mmm hmm." Looking to Spencer she said, "You boys can come back later, okay?"

Spencer nodded. Dean released Phil and Sammy backed away from Dustin. The boys jumped up from the floor, dusting off their embarrassment but there was an entire room full of witnesses to spread the word that their asses had been handed to them by a bunch of babies.

Watching them walk away, Dean and Sammy looked to each other and quietly snickered. Sammy mouthed _jerk_ and Dean mouthed _bitch_. Spencer watched them both and just mouthed _oh brother_.

They moved to pack up their things when a loud squealing of tires was heard followed by a huge crash and a bang. Then there was screaming. The boys looked to each other for only a half a second before they rushed out with half the library jumping to the windows and the other half at their heels. Dean saw it first and he reacted fast. It was unconscious, obsessively maternal and something he'd learned from his mother. Grabbing the two younger boys he pulled them away and folded his hands around their eyes, his own gaze locked on the scene. Sammy was used to Dean doing that: there was a lot in their lives he should have seen that Dean protected him from. Spencer had never had it happen to him before but he trusted Dean and didn't react but it was already too late. He only needed a moment, a second, and the memory was made.

Philip and Dustin's other friend was smashed against the pavement. The human head, so delicate, was so much like an egg when high pressure and velocity hit it. Blood painted the pavement and his legs were twisted. People all around them were screaming.

"Come on," Dean said, his voice low, guiding the boys away from the crowd.

"But we need to get our stuff," Sammy protested, hearing the screams but not knowing what was causing them.

"We'll get it later."

Spencer didn't say a thing. He just allowed himself to be guided as the boy's dead, bloodshot eyes stared through him the entire way home.

That night, when everyone thought he was sleeping, he heard Dean roll out of his sleeping bag and head out of the bedroom. Spencer hadn't slept at all that night and he barely said two words the rest of the day. Rolling out of his own sleeping bag, refusing to sleep on his bed anytime Dean and Sammy visited, Spencer followed him. Staying just a few feet behind, Spencer watched Dean exit through the sliding glass door and into the back yard. Dean, in black pajama bottoms and a white tank top, laid out under the sky. Spencer scratched his leg. It itched in hesitation before he slid back the door as quietly as possible and hovered a few feet away from Dean.

"If you're coming, come. Don't just stand there," Dean said, reaching his arm over his head and patting the grass. Spencer laid out opposite Dean, the crown of their heads just a few inches from touching.

"What are you doing?" Spencer whispered.

Dean shrugged even though he knew Spencer couldn't see him. "Clearing my head," he said. He'd watched the news that night and finally found out the dead kid's name. Leo Andersen. Seventeen years old.

"Because of Leo?" Spencer asked.

"He was in your grade, right?"

"Yeah. I didn't know him like, talked to him, you know? But, we had a few classes together. He wasn't like Phil or Dustin. I really thought he would—" Spencer felt sick all of a sudden. He took a few deep breaths. "He was really good in pre-cal."

Dean had watched the both of them that entire day. Sammy ran around like nothing on Earth could bother him and Spencer moved like his feet were loaded with lead buckshot. Dean was fast, he knew he was, but he wasn't faster than Spencer's brain. He'd seen it and knowing how the kid's mind worked, he'd see it forever.

He pointed up to the clear dark sky that was peppered with stars. "You see that constellation there?"

Spencer edged up until he and Dean were ear to ear and he followed his hand. "I think so."

"Which one is it?"

"I've never been interested in astronomy."

"Kid, you know _everything_."

"Not anything I haven't read before," Spencer huffed. "I pick up things I see and read."

"Heh. Cool, I get to teach you something _for once_."

"What do you know about stars?"

"Dude, my dad is all about knowing how to find yourself in the dark. There's not a star in the sky I _don't_ know."

"Not much of a mechanic's trait."

"He ain't much of a mechanic," Dean chuckled. Spencer's eyes widened at that rare low-blow from Dean against Uncle John and he laughed along with him. Dean started pointing out stars and constellations, naming them, telling him the stories behind the names. It was the only way John had been able to get Dean to learn the star maps in the first place. He needed the fairytale behind them.

"How's this help clear your head?" Spencer asked as the first rays of sunrise began to break up their view.

"I don't know. Keeps my brain busy. As long as I'm trying to see those," he pointed up to the sky, "and remembering the stories behind them, I'm not remembering the things I wanna forget."

Spencer asked quietly, "Like Leo?"

Dean squinted, staring up to his zenith. "I've seen worse. It's not so much _what_ happened but . . . I don't know. Knowing it was my fault?"

Spencer rolled up, "You didn't do that, Dean."

"Yeah, I did. You're gonna tell me if I wasn't there in the library, that kid wouldn't have gotten killed yesterday?"

Spencer couldn't answer that. He was old enough and smart enough to understand cause and effect but he felt so confused. He knew this wasn't Dean's fault. He _knew_ that but why couldn't he answer his question?

"But—" he tried, his mind trying to untwist itself. "If I didn't say anything, they would have just left us alone. All three of them. You want to blame somebody, blame me."

Dean shook his head and sighed. "For standing up for family? I ain't gonna blame you for that."

Spencer grinned, his nose curling, "Are we? Family I mean?"

Dean shrugged. "Practically."

"Boys," they snapped up to the sound of Diana Reid at the sliding door. Dean was struck silent for a moment. Her long blonde hair and her misty white nightgown brought back a million memories for him. "You know what time it is? Come inside."

Icing over the feelings and subsequent emotions, Dean jumped up, rubbing his hands on his pants, mouthing, "_Busted_." He reached over and extended his hand. Taking his palm, Spencer pulled himself up. "How much trouble are we in?"

"Just tell her the truth," Spencer mumbled as they made their way across the grass and back to the house.

"That I was teaching you the stars?"

From the side of his mouth Spencer whispered, "She loves it when I learn new things."

"Did it work?" Dean asked him, frowning just slightly.

It took Spencer a second to even remember what Dean was referring to. That was the proof right there. He gave a short, unexpected smile, "Yeah. It did. Thanks, Dean."

With a cool shrug, Dean Winchester smirked, ruffling Spencer's hair, "No problem."

_Now_

Spencer's happiness on seeing Dean was clouded by Bobby's selective word choices. _He_ wasn't in the building when it went up. Not _they_.

"Uhm," Spencer began to say, his throat suddenly very dry. "You weren't in the police station when the gas line went up?"

Dean scratched his head, "Yeah, about that. I've got a lot to tell you I guess."

Spencer squinted. "You don't look like much of a charred skeleton so I think the answer to that would be pretty short. Like . . . no."

"Wiseass."

"I mean," he didn't know how to ask it. "Was Sam—" Spencer stopped speaking when he saw the sad shadow pass over Dean's eyes. He didn't have to say anything else. He knew.

Bobby Singer felt his own gut twist on knowing what the scene would look like once they all headed out to Sioux Falls. Dean would tear him a new asshole . . . in his forehead.

Dean shoved his hands in his pockets and just said, "How about you tell me what the job is and we'll go down memory lane later."

Spencer nodded, both rejoicing Dean's reappearance in his life and mourning Sam's loss all over again.

* * *

Samuel watched his aunt pour over the large ancient volumes. She couldn't stop reading and studying and seeing and touching. She was as comfortable in Bobby's home as she was in her own.

"You know, more than ninety percent of these books are mine," she said before correcting, "Well _Campbell_ family property. This one was part of your great-great grandfather Ezekiel's collection. He ran a repository out of Boston. The Campbells were all Keepers. Unofficial term, I always hated it, but we _kept_ the line of knowledge for other hunters. Records, books, spells, everything." She looked at him over the top of the book that seemed twice her size. "Something pretty big must have recently happened for me to find out about a whole new race of demon at _this_ stage of the game."

He didn't answer her unsaid but clearly implied question. Instead he sat on the edge of Bobby's couch and asked, "So the Campbell hunting clan went back pretty far?"

"Nice dodge," Diana said and Sam had to laugh. "And yes, eldest child to eldest child, the surname changed over the years but it was _Campbell_ for four generations until it," she gestured to Sam, "became Winchester."

"Well, Dean goes by Campbell now so—"

That seemed to tickle her to no end. "Your father would be _so_ mad."

Sam chuckled and nodded. Yeah, his dad definitely would be.

"Our line of Keepers went back to Cardinal Immanuel Veritas. He was a Vatican translator who had access to _volumes_ of apocryphal scripture that were kept under lock and key for various reasons. That entire wall," she pointed to a wide and tall bookshelf, "is just his extractions. It took him years to copy it all and ferret it out. When the church finally realized what he'd done he was halfway around the world but they still excommunicated him. He ended up heading a protestant mission in India and was married there in his old age to a young girl named Apsara. As a family, we only ended back in Europe during Victoria's reign when a young captain named David Campbell, who came from a highland family of Sidhe hunters, married a local school teacher against all advice from his peers and brought her home to England. That was my great-great grandmother Nishtha, Ezekiel's mother."

"What about grandma's family?"

"My mom? Oh, well she came from very pretty southern stock. Vampire hunters. My great-great-great grandmother was a Creole freed woman from New Orleans. Her name was Jean Louise le Blanc and she was the first hunter on that side of our line. Most feared vampire huntress of her time. Her father was a scandalous French slave trader living in Haiti who enjoyed having his way with both his female _and_ male slaves. Jean's mother was a young girl who he, for his own good, _never_ should have touched. She was from a long line of Hoodoo priestesses from West Africa. This," Diana said, reaching over to a very old, calf-skin bound book high up on a shelf, "was her spell book. Dark and dangerous stuff and it can only be wielded by those in her bloodline. In the early days, Bobby kept trying to find ways for him to use it. Every time he made an attempt he shaved a few years off his life."

Sam's mouth dropped open.

"Don't worry, I put them right back," she laughed. "Anyway, the morning after the Frenchman _well_ you know, she got her revenge by . . . making him a eunuch." Sam flinched. "Yep. She ensured he'd _never_ touch another person like that again. She then managed to stowaway on a ship headed for Louisiana."

Sam shook his head. He had always loved Diana's stories, the way she told them, the expressiveness of her voice and her hands. He never thought his family had such history. His dad never spoke a word about anything and besides, he would never have known about any of this anyway. The Winchester family had been a long line of bankers and accountants before John Winchester disrupted it all when he joined the Marines and then became a hunter. "What was her name? Jean's mom."

Diana took a small breath and shrugged, "Marie."

"Oh," he looked down and away.

"Marie Heloise Dubois but she changed it when she reached America. The Dubois was the Frenchman's name and she absolutely refused to be called that. The _le_ _Blanc_ was Jean's nickname, you can guess why. Eventually it became the family name. The le Blanc line is rigidly maternal, Marie made sure of that. All the girls and the first born sons get the family names, father's wishes be damned. Marie, Mary, Jean, Diana, Deanna, with Dean as the only male variant."

"And Samuel?"

"Oh," she said with too playful a smile. "Well, my dad knew what he was getting himself into by marrying a le Blanc woman. He'd have to have two boys to get naming rights and there he went and had two girls." She chuckled. "He was Samuel, his father was Ishmael, his father was Ezekiel, and so on. Mimi would have been Daniel if she'd been a boy. The name should have passed down to you but . . . she missed dad."

Sam furrowed his brows. He was glad to be a _Sam_ over a _Dan_. He hummed, "Spencer?"

"His father's choice. First born son but Mimi went ahead and had Dean two years earlier so I gave Bill dibs," she laughed. "But oh, he wanted Spencer to be _Bill Jr_. of which I had to lobby passionately against all the way up to the fortieth week of pregnancy. My son would _not_ grow up being called Billy or Willy," she said, making a face and Sam smiled, nodding.

"How did Bobby get the books?"

"Ahh, you're really asking how we met, aren't you? Crafty. Well, it's hard trying to live in two worlds. I met and married Bill before—" she didn't have to finish. They know the event that changed their respective lives. "All of these were in storage. Mimi wanted to forget this life; I wanted to forget this life but we lived in fear of that deal she made to save John and those ten years just kept ticking down. We tried everything, researched everything but it wasn't enough. When she died, when your dad described what he saw, I knew I had to get back in. I tried to stop him. I tried to—"

"Protect him?"

She grinned, "Couldn't say _that_ to his face, stubborn mule. But yes, I wanted you boys to just _live_. I was already involved. This was my _little sister_. If the Campbell line was going to go on it was going to turn Reid _not_ Winchester. I didn't need John to get mixed up in things he had no way of understanding. The man repaired transmissions for a living. He didn't even know how to handle a cursed object much less a yellow-eyed demon."

"So what happened?"

"His pigheaded self went to see Missouri," she said then looked to him. He nodded. Yeah, he knew Missouri. "Well, she told him everything he _didn't_ need to hear and then that banshee went and gave him a message for me."

"What was the message?"

Diana sighed. "She told me I wouldn't be able to do this. Not alone."

"Why?"

And with a rueful smile, Diana said, "She saw I'd be too sick to see it through. I wasn't even manifesting yet but she knew. If I continued on my own . . . well, I guess it wasn't meant to be. John tried to keep me out and I tried to keep him out. We sort of crashed in the middle."

"Bobby?"

"Yep." She gestured to the study. "Sioux Falls, South Dakota. John came on a job and I was here trying to teach a very green and _very_ cocky Bobby Singer how to read Latin. Fast learner that one. Came all the way down to Nevada looking for me and the Campbell library. Bill almost got into a fist fight with him until I told him Bobby was some cousin or something, I don't even remember. Bobby eventually became the Keeper for my generation. Honorary Campbell." She took a long breath, closing the book. "And as for the next generation . . . well you have _Heaven_, Dean has a family now with the occasional job pulling him back in but he's _out_. He needs to be. Somebody has to have _some_ semblance of normalcy and he's already halfway there. As much as I wanted to protect him from it, it looks like these will go to Spencer now that this can of worms is opened." She frowned. "It's so, odd." Looking over the rows and columns of books she said, "He is perfectly formed for it. I always thought it would be you."

Sam said nothing, only thinking that maybe it _was_ supposed to be him crawling through dusty books from the comfort of a homestead living like Bobby before Heaven and Hell decided to play a proxy war with his family.

"I was so _ready_ to jump into this world again when I heard about Mimi. Vengeance is _such_ a powerful motivator. Spencer was two and his life would have been _so_ different . . . then again, would it? I started to wonder a while ago. In the end he did eventually learn how to handle guns. He's learned Latin, Biblical Greek; he hunts monsters, just not the supernatural kind. He's even killed men. Give him two days in this library and he'll know more than me and Bobby combined. I didn't even _try_ and he's a hunter already. Like he was born for it." She felt oddly worried as the thoughts passed through her. Her mood darkened. For the very first time she recognized the hand of providence moving in her child's life. It was like something had set her son's fate in motion from before his birth. Whatever it was . . . "This life has its way of pulling people in, doesn't it?"

The muscles in Sam's neck tightened and with a grim mouth he said, "Yeah. It does."

* * *

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	10. Whatever It Is Will Be

**Chapter Ten**

**Whatever it is will be**

This shit was supposed to be done. Over. When he told Bobby to only call him if the world was ending that _meant_ only if the world was _actually_ ending. White-eyed demons were bad and they only poked their heads out of the pit for the occasion of an apocalypse but Bobby had no idea what they were up against when he'd called him. The only substitute for _end of the world_ in Dean's eyes was _any kind of bogey _after Spencer_._ Bobby knew this. When he'd called Dean he knew this was the only excuse in _existence_ that could drag him back into this life.

Spencer had expected Dean to mimic Bobby's response to the whole situation but instead of showing a fear that confirmed the realness of the danger, Dean seemed pissed, irritated and . . . putout? It was as if, for Dean, white-eyed demons were just an exasperating case of the hiccups. It was hard to reconcile that with what he knew. Bobby had called Dean _before_ he'd discovered the problem at hand was a white-eyed demon so it seemed safe to conclude that Dean was intended as regular back-up for a regular case. Cas was called in as the 'cavalry' once the real situation was known. Why was it then that Dean and Bobby were engaged in an exchange at that moment that revealed Dean's familiarity with what was going on?

"Signs?" Dean asked Bobby.

"Cas was sure it was just residuals from the big one but then there were a couple of rusty rivers in Charleston—"

Dean's _pissed_ factor went up. "You didn't think that was big enough to call me?"

"A bloody river ain't the end of the world; it's a couple of red-eyes with too much time—"

"And a week later the kid ends up on the wrong end of a flamethrower—"

"It's not like the signs were pointing to the kid anyway!"

And it all came full circle when Dean finally turned to Spencer and asked with a face that seemed busy on solving a puzzle, "Why you and why now?"

For some strange reason, Spencer felt himself release a heavy burden of question and wonder when Dean spoke the very words he'd been too afraid to ask.

Folding his arms and quirking his lip, Bobby offered, "Work related? Kid puts away a lot of evil—"

"Yeah, _human version_ which might mean something to your everyday meat-walkers but, no offense Spencer, means jack-shit to a white-eyed. We're talking big-picture here, Bobby."

Sitting at his desk, Spencer never expected the day would come when Dean would be in full authority and hold the necessary expertise to dismiss the work of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. He always thought Dean had it in him to lead and it was oddly comforting to submit his own elementary understanding of the subject at hand to someone with, literally, a lifetime's length of training.

He wondered, "Dean, are you asking me to recount in what ways I could have elicited the particular attention of a top-level demon?"

And on assessing that mildly sardonic question Dean sighed, giving Spencer the once-over, saying, "Never mind."

Bobby flopped onto the Chesterfield.

"Hmm," Dean muttered, pacing. "If it's not personal and that's not likely, not for a white-eyed, only other option is bloodline. Demons _love_ that." It was said with thick disdain but still, Bobby froze. It was exactly what he'd been thinking earlier—the Campbell bloodline. It was the only way it made sense. "But if a white-eyed needed you for something _specific_ he would have just ripped your tongue out before you finished the exorcism." Spencer's mouth sank open. Dean seemed perfectly drawn in thought. "Then he'd have all the time he needed to fuck with your head. He's playing a game, Bobby's right about that but they only play around with the people they don't _need_. If they need you, they lead you to what they want from you; they don't just let you go. Letting you go must be a part of the plan. He's leading you or you're bringing him someplace he wants to be, either way, going after the people you care about is just standard torment."

"So, if he wants something from me then it's not the bloodline?"

"_Yes_, bloodline," Dean said, irritated as of he expected Spencer to catch up faster. "White-eyes don't care if you know where the fountain of youth is buried. Stuff they want to _know_ they can get through . . . torture. Your blood, that's a whole other story. If he took days just to lay this trap for you then trust me, you're part of some serious cosmic significance or they would just take it out if your skin. And, no, this has nothing to do about your job; let's get that squared away right now. A black-eyed might pay attention if you stopped a man from building a _five-year old girl_ cemetery in his basement but unless you stopped an atom bomb from dropping on a hundred thousand Gerber babies, a white-eyed is wondering why you're fucking up his morning coffee. That's the point: they don't roll out of bed for anything less than an apocalypse. They're so ancient and they're so evil they like Hell just fine."

They only roll out of bed for an apocalypse and yet Dean was so familiar with them.

"How many have you dealt with?" Spencer asked.

"Pure white? Two. There was another not so far up the food chain. He was relatively easy," Dean said with a shrug.

Two. Dean met with two of the monsters that needed Armageddon to bother leaving Hell. Spencer knew he was getting the story unconsciously and in bits and pieces. Wondering just how much he had missed in the past nine years Spencer asked him, "What's your _cosmic significance_?"

Dean shrugged but this was clearly not a good topic for him. "Had one. Don't anymore."

Looking between him and Bobby, Spencer's mind clarified a question he hadn't asked. "Castiel . . . he was your guardian."

"Yeah, well . . . _almost_ was. Technically still is but it's hard to get an angel who was assigned to you by heaven to just jump post 'cause I say he's being a pain in the ass," he snorted.

Spencer just gaped. "Dean, don't you think only someone with some pretty serious _cosmic significance_ would have an _archangel_ as their guardian angel?"

"Like I said, that's a technicality," he replied, obviously irritated but Spencer could see something had been triggered just behind Dean's eyes. It was something Dean had given thought to before but he'd ignored it as best as he could. After what happened with Sam and the entire world coming _this_ close to being a really huge coffin, Dean took his three months of normalcy and rest to push away the little niggling details like for instance, why Cas was still mixed up with them.

Destiny was a funny thing; whatever it is will be. If he was _supposed_ to be Michael's vessel he _would_ have been. Getting Adam to fill in the void had been easy—too easy—as if that had been _his_ destiny and not Dean's. It was supposed to have been impossible but it was possible, fathomable and achievable. Heaven had spent the better part of two years convincing him to let go of himself but all that time Adam could have done just as well? The question about God and destiny was then laid out on the table. If God could get something like that wrong . . . or maybe all of it was under the purview of freewill? If not, that only left two possibilities—either God was wrong about his destiny and He _was_ fallible, which should have erased existence in totality so Dean was pretty sure that wasn't _it_ or the other option: Sam was destined to be Lucifer's vessel, which he was and Adam was destined to be Michael's vessel, which he was and Dean was left to be or do something else in a battle or a war they hadn't even conceived of as yet.

"I'm a mechanic," Dean said looking down to the hardwood floor. "Happily retired from all this."

"You're out?" Spencer asked, mildly shocked. When he saw Dean arrive he was sure—

"Oh, I'm _so_ out. I'm only here because of the old man," Dean explained. Bobby grumbled.

"But you didn't know what the job was—"

"He wouldn't have called unless it was serious."

"But he didn't even know how serious this was when he called you—"

"What are you asking?"

"I—I don't know. I guess I want to know if you would even be here if you knew it was about me? Bobby didn't tell you anything that would have taken you from your home but you came anyway—"

"'Cause he asked—"

"And if he _did_ tell you I was in the middle of it? That all this was because of me would you be here? Is that why he didn't tell you?"

"Oh, come on—"

"I'm serious," he said and it was said very quietly.

"If I knew the job was you I would've been here hours ago. I hate planes, he knows it and that's the truth, okay?" He didn't bother adding the fact that he'd be sick with worry the entire trip. Dean had no idea how he could deal so straight with _end of the world_ but twist into knots when it came to the people close to him.

Spencer nodded, giving a very faint smile. "Okay."

Dean huffed, "Ego trip."

"Hey—"

A loud, strangled scream pierced the apartment and the sounds of struggles came from the bedroom. Dean threw open the sliding doors and Spencer rushed past him into the room. Morgan was struggling half asleep against a phantom attacker. He was dreaming. Spencer had hoped his sleep would have been at least void if they were unable to be pleasant. His wish hadn't been granted.

"Don't!" Dean shouted, grabbing Spencer a moment before Morgan swung out, his fist just missing his jaw by a fraction. "Don't touch him. Not when he's still in it." Dean looked to Spencer who looked like he didn't know what to do or say but clearly wanting to say and do something. From Bobby's discussion about what happened earlier, Dean got the clear impression that this guy and Spencer were close and the demons wouldn't have targeted him otherwise. "His name's Derek, right?" Dean asked Spencer, encouraging him to say something, anything helpful.

"Yeah."

"He allergic to milk?"

Spencer frowned, "What? No. Why?"

"You're gonna have to help me calm him down," he said, giving the kid a task he could handle 'cause talking to his best friend at the moment wasn't gonna help either of them. "Coffee, milk instead of water, go on," he said, pointing Spencer out of the room and towards Bobby who hovered at the doorway. Dean gave Bobby a look that said _get him out of here_.

"You want me to make a latte for night terrors?" Spencer asked not even trying to hide his incredulity.

"Tall cup, make it sweet. A normal definition of sweet, not yours."

He knew what Dean was doing and he protested, "You don't even know him—"

"Don't need to to know what he needs to hear."

Spencer turned to Bobby in hope of receiving some assistance but Bobby just put his hand on his shoulder and led him towards the kitchen. Spencer wanted to fight against him, he wanted to turn and go back to Morgan but Bobby just said, "You can't talk somebody out of the memories of demon torture. It don't work that way." And the solemn way Bobby had said it reminded Spencer who the experts were in this situation. He did manage to ask, on entering the kitchen,

"If he's not going to talk him through it, what's his plan?"

Perspective. The kid needed it to understand. He'd just keep asking questions if he gave him something trite and unsubstantial. The truth was nobody on Earth but Dean was a living example of mentally surviving decades in Hell but could the kid handle knowing that?

"Bobby? What aren't you saying?"

Ready or not . . .

Dean looked to Derek who was slowly waking from his nightmare. Weird to have nightmares before noon. He'd watched Reid and Bobby retreat, leaving a new face. Morgan was not in the mood for a new face.

"Who are you?"

"Bobby called me up," he answered seeing as his name would mean diddly as the first thing out of his mouth. "Dean," he said refraining from extending his hand, knowing that being touched was the last thing Derek needed. "Dean Campbell." Months of conditioning had the name flow from his lips unconsciously. It sounded weird in this context. _Winchester_ was for this life. _Campbell_ was mortgage payments and the light bill and for registering Ben at the Y, it wasn't for demons.

Morgan sat up in the bed and looked him over. "You're a hunter, like Bobby?"

Dean blew out his cheeks, "Kinda. _Was_, not really much anymore. Yeah? short answer."

Morgan gave a quiet snort and said, "That was an answer?"

Dean shrugged, "Right." He took to the chair by the foot of the bed. "He told me what happened. You've been unlucky enough to meet Meg."

The name made Derek's skin crawl but he hid it. Dean saw right through him, the name dropped as a test balloon to see how he would react and he failed the test. Brilliantly. "Bobby said he had history with her."

"Not like the history you have with her now. Hell, worst she ever did to me was put a bullet in my shoulder. Granted she was wearing my kid brother at the time so, points for style—"

"I get you want to help me but I'm fine."

Dean closed his mouth and gave him a casual grin before saying, "If that's true then you are one fucked up son of a bitch—"

"Hey—"

"Dude, you were _cut in half_ a couple of hours ago so if you think you can just catch a nap and everything's kosher—"

"What? You think I should be paying you by the hour to fix this? I don't even know what the hell this is but I do know I can't afford to lose it—"

"You're already losing it. You've _got to_. That's the point. Nobody in their right head has that done to them and gets through on their own—"

"Yeah 'cause this is such a common thing, right?" As the words came out of his mouth, Morgan looked away, remembering himself. "Right. You people hunt these things. You probably have _support groups_ or some shit." Shaking his head he quietly asked, "A lot of people have this happen to them?"

"I've seen my share of hunters and just plain, regular people torn apart. Same as you, sometimes worse. They've never survived."

"Then how can you possibly know—"

"I have. They haven't but I have." Silence fell between them. "Surviving always depends on whether you have a Cas in your back pocket."

Morgan looked down to his feet which were flat on the twisted sheets. "Yeah."

Dean pulled the chair closer and didn't have to search very deep or far for his memories of the time he'd spent in Hell. Thirty years of going through what Derek had endured except on a daily basis and then ten years of doing it to others. Dean knew the methods, the variations, the protocols. He knew the human body better than a veteran surgeon. He knew the width of every joint, the exact pressure needed to split them . . . _everything_.

He looked into Derek's eyes and pointed to his left hand. "Tips first, just to scare you. Knots of nerve endings at the tips of the fingers and the pain zips through your whole body. Then the first joint at your thumb. No going back from that. There's a permanence and all you can think of outside of the pain is if I survive, this is gonna remind me, everyday. Then the ring finger because of the symbolism but only if you're single. If you're married, they leave it. It's a better reminder to leave it." He pointed to Morgan's right hand. "They carve out your lifeline, extending it up to the elbow. They find it hilarious. Call it ironic—"

Morgan clenched his fists in the sheets and looked away. "I'm alive." He looked down to his right hand, to his life line. "Maybe it is ironic."

"No. You're alive, That's all. Don't wonder why, don't ask or doubt. This whole thing _will_ bring you down, to your knees—"

"Why are you telling me this?"

"You need to be ready for when it happens. It'll knock your ass for a mammoth-sized loop and if you're strutting around one minute like you're on top of the world, when the ground falls out under you and the next minute you're bawling like a baby, _that's_ what's gonna fuck you up. That's what's gonna get you killed. Okay?"

He was right. Morgan knew, he could feel it was the truth. "I'm gonna fall apart," he said, staring out to nothing in particular.

"Yeah."

"It's gonna hit hard."

"Yeah."

"I can't pretend it's not."

"Nope. But when it does, I'm gonna be here, okay? The kid'll be here, Bobby'll be here. You'll make it."

Morgan took a deep breath and nodded. "Thanks, Dean."

There was a short rap on the doorframe and they looked around to see Spencer carrying a huge mug with steam flowing out of it. Dean gestured to Derek and Spencer handed it to him.

Morgan frowned at it, "What is it?"

"Café con leche," Dean said with a wide grin. "There was this girl in Miami; she had a haunted coffee shop. It helps."

Derek grinned, "Man that was probably the girl, not the coffee."

Spencer looked between them and did his best to hold his smile together but Bobby's words were getting to him. Finding out that Dean _had_ died, just not when he thought he had; finding out he'd gone to Hell . . .

"Kid?" Derek asked, watching Spencer's face, the fading smile, the far-off and empty look in his eyes. Dean turned and took one look at him before he clenched his jaw. The pissed quotient was back. Bobby had a big damn mouth.

"Derek," Dean said, standing, his eyes never leaving Spencer. "We'll be right back." He led Spencer by the arm out of the room, his other hand gripping Bobby as they passed the threshold.

"Boy!" Bobby protested as they were pushed into the kitchen. He'd have finger marks in his skin for days.

"Bobby, on what _planet_ did you think I wanted that to come from you and not me?"

"The kid wanted to know what qualifications you had for _insane-torture_ _expert_!"

Dean wanted to reply but no words formed. The thoughts flashing before him were memories, years of memories of him as a victim and as inquisitor. He turned away and leaned against the counter. Spencer watched him. The confirmation of demons had, for some reason still left the idea of Hell as a philosophically debatable thing. Hell as a state of mind, state of flux, the absence of good in one's consciousness—it was all false. Hell was a _place_, a physical place somewhere tangible in their universe and Dean had been there, suffered there. And yes he'd dealt with white-eyed demons because there had been an _apocalypse_. That's where the story had ended; the coffee was ready. Dean was the righteous man who broke under the weight of decades of the same torture he had seen in Morgan's apartment.

"Dean," Spencer said, wondering if his voice was real. "You've spent more time there than you have here." It was all he could say. The idea of a life that was overshadowed by absolute pain did something strange to Spencer's understanding of Dean. He was thirty one years old but he'd been down there forty years. He couldn't comprehend what that did to a person. It was more than a generation filled with never-ending cycles and cycles of the thing Spencer's mind couldn't even handle on seeing it happen to his best friend and it had happened to Dean. Dean who had been more than a friend to him; Dean who had announced they were family.

There was no way a mind could survive that intact but here he was, functional, cognitive, able to laugh and most of all, sane. It never occurred to Spencer before that moment the kind of thing Dean must have been made from or how his childhood had shaped him to survive. Something deep inside of him was glad that he never encouraged Dean to challenge and disobey his father. He probably wouldn't have survived if he had.

That only left Spencer with one thought lingering over them all: was Sam dead because he _had_ led him to betray his father, his family? Would he be alive if he'd just stayed home?

Dean just absently grinned. "Think I can fit seventy-two candles on my cake next year?"

"It's not funny—"

"Are you telling me?" He asked it without heat as he said most things lately. There was a submission there. A calm letting go of an anger he used to feel but no longer allowed to control him.

It was such a strange tone for such a strange topic that Spencer had no idea how to respond. "I'm not telling or asking; I don't think I'm even understanding."

Dean gave Bobby a hard look and just said, "Yeah. I wanted you to hear it from me."

"It's how you met Cas. He got you out."

"I started it. I had to finish it."

"Did you?"

The question was simple, almost perfectly obvious but it said something to him deeper than any of his reflections since he saw his brothers fall into the pit. How could he have been the one to start it if he hadn't been the one to finish it? How could he be the _righteous man_ who was destined to be Michael's vessel if he never _was_ Michael's vessel? Sam was gone, Adam was gone, Lucifer was sealed away, it _had_ to be over. It had to be but . . . here they were again. Here were the signs, the white-eyes dicking around in human business. It was supposed to be done but it wasn't—he never finished it.

The possibility of sacrificing his brothers for nothing was forming a ball in his throat and Dean bit it down.

Spencer and Bobby watched him. The movements were small, subtle, but walls were crashing down clear in his face. The question kept repeating over and over—how could he be the one to start it when he wasn't the one who ended it? How could it be done and still not done? It wasn't possible. It couldn't be possible. He didn't lose Sam and Adam for nothing.

Did you? Dean, did you?

Did you end the end of the world?

"No. I didn't."

"Dean—" Bobby began but Dean just rolled his eyes and put a palm to his forehead.

"It's true. I didn't actually _do_ anything, did I? It doesn't really make sense does it? Only way it makes sense is if it's not over."

"What in the hell d'you mean _not over_?"

"What if he got out—" Dean began but he couldn't deal with it. The idea of Lucifer breaking out of the prison they'd opened for him, the idea of Sam sacrificing himself to do something that would now be pointless, worthless. The knowledge that his brother was somewhere now enduring the kind of pain he'd gone through. But was it possible? If Lucy broke out, first thing he'd want would be to rip Dean into bite-sized pieces but he never came. The idea of Lucifer having his scent terrified him. The idea of him lurking in the shadows just waiting . . .

_What if he got out?_ Dean's words jolted Bobby's soul. He was the secret keeper, the man who knew it all and said even less. Fact was Lucifer did make his way out of the pit. Fact was he went straight for Dean ready to burn his soul into cinders. All of that was true but it was only the first part of a long story. It wasn't what Dean was thinking. Lucifer was gone, buried so deep down inside of Sam that he'd never see the light of day again.

"He?" Spencer asked. They both looked to him. This was definitely nothing he needed to know right then.

"Never mind," they said in unison.

Spencer's jaw set, his nostrils flared and he gave them both a look that clearly revealed all the pent-up frustration he'd been feeling since the night before. "Don't do that. Do not shut me out. I'm in the middle of this. They're after my mom, my friends—"

It was Spencer's prerogative to be pissed. Dean was okay with that. When demons were after you and you finally had a chance to decompress in your own space you had a right to be mad, angry, upset. Less than twenty-four hours ago his entire life imploded. Deep-held beliefs died away. The world, as he knew it, was a mask for something more sinister and in Spencer's line of work that said too much. It was an uncomfortable too much.

Leaning back against the counter by the entryway that led to the living room, Dean readied himself for a stern talking to by the good doctor—let him get his steam settled. Looking to one of the windows, the one over the sink, he saw the bright morning sunlight drifting in. He was bone-tired but sleep was going to have to wait. Bobby, who was a few feet away, looked like he wasn't in the mood for a lecture. He'd said too damn much as it was. If he started going off about Lucifer and vessels the kid might collapse under the weight of it all.

Spencer knew that they weren't going to tell him anything about who 'he' was but from Dean's words, his tone, 'he' was whoever was at the pinnacle of this. Spencer had been part of too many interrogations to know that they wouldn't volunteer this information; he'd have to guess right and read their body language.

"I know the Bible too. I can guess," he said. Bobby rolled his eyes and Dean pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Which Bible?" Dean asked, pushing off the counter and heading for the coffee maker. "There are a ton of them and they all say different things."

"It's the apocalypse, Dean. Not a lot of figures you can lock away to prevent that. I don't think key players were lost in translation."

One point for Spencer.

Dean clamped his mouth, his back still turned to him as he poured himself a cup.

"The . . ." he felt one-part ridiculous and another part horrified to even say, "Anti-Christ?"

"You're asking me if we locked up the Anti-Christ to prevent Armageddon?"

"Yeah." His mouth was dry.

"Which one?" Dean asked, turning back to him.

"Which . . . one?"

"There's more than one Anti-Christ walking around. King James Version leaves that point out." The kid looked like a wind would tip him over. Dean continued, "There are a lot of players in an apocalypse. Whore of Babylon? Shanked her myself. Four horsemen? Got three out of four to skip town. War," he whistled, "he had a sweet ride. Sam took care of Famine and Pestilence was a nasty son of a bitch. Then there was Death."

Spencer was having a little trouble breathing. "You met Death?"

"We had _pizza_."

"You had pizza with Death?"

"He is one scary old bastard," Dean said, almost to himself. "But, decent enough."

Spencer's mind was in a tailspin and it couldn't latch onto any coherent thoughts. Like file containers slamming shut his fear was seizing his brain and nothing was coming—

"Satan?" He exhaled.

Dean's mouth closed and as much as he tried, all the memories flowed in from where he had thought he'd buried them. He looked away and said nothing and Spencer got his answer. He didn't want it anymore.

"Sit down before you fall over," Dean ordered, glancing to him.

"What?" The kid asked as if he didn't realize he'd been spoken to. His hands were shaking.

Bobby moved to him to settle him on a chair when Dean saw the ruby-red dot floating over the worn summer flannel of Bobby's shirt. His mind switched to full-active in a blink as his eyes went to the window over the sink and saw the dot reflected there passing through the glass. He moved. Without thinking or consideration of the consequences, Dean moved.

The glass barely broke as the bullet passed through it. It was moving too fast to make a sound other than the split second it pressed through the window. That sound was blocked by Bobby's grunt and immediate curses as he tumbled over with Dean barreling down on him.

"Boy! What in the—" He began but stopped cold when he saw the grimace on Dean's face.

Spencer's eyes weren't on them but were instead locked onto the blood splatter that peppered his kitchen wall. Frames of Pollock were covered in blood. The bullet that had made no sound had left a distinct mark.

"Dean!" Spencer shouted, tearing his eyes away from the blood and down to Dean. His white shirt showed just one small hole and it was almost completely bloodless but from the fading color of Dean's skin and the plume behind him, the damage was worse from where he couldn't see.

They both went to him but with a hard push he shoved them away from him breathing, "Windows!" An aftershock of pain gripped him and he bent his knees up, his feet flat on the floor to stem the ache. "Get away from the windows—" He ordered before his breath stuck in his throat and he was left panting for air.

Gripping Spencer by the shoulders, Bobby pulled him to the darkest corner of the kitchen and away from the exposed area.

"No!" Spencer screamed, fighting with Bobby when another bullet cracked through the second window. It buried itself in the floor by Spencer's feet.

Derek ran to the kitchen doorway only to see Dean, pale as death, breathing hard, shallow and fast as he bled out on the tile. "Dean—" He called out about to move into the room when another bullet crashed into the wall just next to him. "A Sniper?" Derek called out, his back to the wall just outside the kitchen.

"Looks like they," Dean panted, "finally figured out what century this is."

"Cas ain't answering!" Bobby shouted keeping his finger on his phone's redial.

"Cell phones don't work in Heaven," Dean noted, his breathing slowing. They all looked at him. A small, clear circle of blood was collecting under him. The bullet had entered an inch north and to the right of his navel. The speed of it, the velocity at which it hit him had left a tiny mark at his front and exited with such force that he could barely understand the pain he was feeling. The last time he'd felt anything like it, he had already been dead.

Spencer couldn't stand there and watch him die. He just got him back, he just came back—His mind started to move again, leaping, bounding, "He's gonna be fine but Cas—Cas brought him back before he can—"

"No, he's got his orders. The angels up top won't let him bring a soul out of Heaven without clearance. They're not exactly Dean's biggest fans after what happened. I was the last miracle resurrection on his docket."

In those words Spencer heard that once Dean was gone, he was gone for good and, "You died?"

"Hell kid, we all have, at least once."

The shot had been intended for Bobby but Dean saved him. Whether it had been done blindly and in the heat of the moment could be argued later. As it stood all three of them had been clear shots but the shooter aimed for Bobby. That meant something. Spencer understood what that meant and he made his choice, probably just as blindly and as in the heat of the moment as Dean had made his. With two long and fast strides, Spencer got free of Bobby and was at the first window before he or Morgan could protest. For what felt like an infinitum, Spencer stood in the broad light of the day, every vital part of him a clear target. His heart skipped as he quickly reached up and drew down the shade. He rushed over to the other window and did the same, throwing the kitchen into darkness. He called out the bluff. They were still in the _fucking with him_ phase. The _attack the people he loved_ phase. What he didn't understand was if they really wanted to hurt him in that moment, for all he cared about Bobby Dean would and should have been their true target. If the demons knew how he felt about Bobby, surely they knew about Dean. From the history Dean had with them anyway, he also should have been a target in his own right.

Spencer turned back to Dean who was grinning at him. "That's why you're the smart one," he said but speaking was clearly an effort.

Bobby and Spencer went to him and with Morgan they pulled Dean into the living room. A long trail of blood followed. Bobby snapped open his phone and tried again as Spencer ran to the bathroom. Morgan carefully turned Dean over onto his side. He was shivering and cursing.

"You kiss your mama with that mouth?" Morgan mumbled, lifting the shirt up and away from the raw skin.

Dean smiled through a hiss. "How's it look?" He mumbled.

"Ever got bit by a dog?" Morgan asked, pressing his palm against the stream of blood.

"Yeah," Dean breathed. If Hellhounds counted then double-yeah.

"Substitute lion for dog. That's how it looks."

"Awesome."

Spencer bound back into the room with a towel he'd drenched in cold water and he passed it over to Morgan. They pressed it to Dean's back and Spencer looked up to Bobby, "Anything?"

"No," Bobby said, slamming the phone and biting the back of his hand when he remembered himself. Flipping open the phone he dialed a new number.

Dean's thoughts were hazy but they lingered on Lisa and Ben and the promises he'd made to them, the promises he'd made to himself. He stared at the glossy floor and could only think of home . . .

"He's not breathing!" Morgan shouted.

Fingers slick with blood went to Dean's throat and Spencer choked out, "No pulse." They rolled him onto his injured back and Morgan began chest compressions as Spencer tilted his head and started to breathe into him.

On the second ring a voice finally answered the phone and running over pleasantries, Bobby only yelled out, "How's your healing?"

Sam's nerves went instantly aflame, "Pretty crappy, why?"

"It's Dean—"

It was all he had to say as Sam reached out, latching onto a thought of Bobby, and he stepped through the space between the universe, pulling himself to his side, appearing just behind him in the middle of Spencer's living room. On the floor receiving CPR was his brother. It had been the first time in three months that Sam had laid eyes on Dean and when he often pictured their reunion he never imagined _this_.

If his soul wasn't there—

Opening up his Sight, Sam looked to the Second World, the dimension that just overlaid reality. It was this reality that angels and demons and spirits moved within when they were on Earth. On the walls of the apartment he could see the sigils and wards Cas left before he went to assign the guardians. It would protect the room from demons entering but they didn't protect from physical things of the world such as what looked like a bullet that was killing his brother.

The body was beginning to release the spirit, Sam could see that. Dean's heart and his breathing had stopped and whatever was still alive in his mind was choking and dying. But he was still there. He was still alive. Sam could save him.

Sam moved quickly from Bobby's side. Bobby jolted, not realizing Sam hadn't still been on the line with him, Dean's name still hanging on his lips. Barely a moment had passed.

Spencer and Derek jolted as the new person dropped down between them.

"Sammy?" Spencer couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Sam put his right hand under Dean's neck, holding up his head and his left hand went to the wound, hovering over it. A second later there was no wound, no hole in the fabric. No blood. But Dean still wasn't breathing.

"Damn it," Sam cursed, shaking out his wrist and holding it over his brother's heart. Like a jolt of electricity hit him, Dean's chest lurched up, his back arching off the floor. Sam pulled his hand back and Dean's eyes flew open and he drew in one long gasp of air, his muscles still tight and clenched when he finally dropped back to the floor as he gulped breaths.

Dean's eyes were glazed, his vision was quickly darkening when he locked onto that familiar hazel and the slightest pinch of confusion could be read in his face before his eyes rolled and his body relaxed. He was still ashen and his skin was cold but his heart was beating and he was breathing.

"Another angel," Derek said, looking to Dean and sitting back on his heels.

"Almost," Sam grimaced, his eyes on his brother. "Haven't got my wings yet. Still shit at healing."

"Sammy?" Spencer said, looking over him but not sure he was seeing him. "I thought—Dean said—"

"He doesn't know I'm not dead," Sam ground out, not looking up. "All he knows is that I died."

"You know each other?" Derek asked.

Spencer's voice was small. "This is Dean's brother. Sam Winchester."

"Whoa, what? Dean's brother is an angel?"

"_Samuel_," Sam replied finally tearing his eyes from Dean. "I don't have a last name. Not anymore. You can just call me _Sam_ for short."

Spencer couldn't believe what he was hearing. This entire day had been one thing after another but now he found out that _Sam_, the kid he used to read to, the kid who would call him almost every night his freshman year because he couldn't call his dad and he dared not call Dean was a—

"You're Castiel's apprentice."

"What happened to him?" Sam asked as something dark passed over his eyes. He got to his feet.

"Rifle shots through the kitchen window," Morgan said as he watched the gamut of emotions pass over Reid's face. "Kid? You okay?"

Spencer only shook his head as he looked to Dean below him and to Sam above him. This was his new reality.

"Don't," Bobby said and Spencer and Derek looked up to see Bobby holding out his hands in a sign to stop Sam. "Whatever you're thinkin', he still needs you; he needs you here. We have to go—"

"Bobby, they almost killed him and they're right outside. I can do this."

"You can barely piece him back together!" Bobby shouted, hours of blood and death and strain and anxiety exploding from him. "You're all we got right now."

Sam clenched his fists and had to stop himself from driving one into a wall. He nodded once he threw a reign around his rage.

Bobby placed a hand on his shoulder and said, "Okay."

Derek turned to Spencer and in a single look conveyed the sentiment: I'm glad he's on our side. A frown then appeared on his face a moment later. "Wait. Winchester?"

"Yeah," Spencer said as a touch of panic hit him. Fear that Derek had recognized the name from the manhunt and the explosion those years prior flit through him just before it died in on itself with the knowledge that it could all be explained and everything Derek had seen and experienced so far would make the explanation that much easier.

"Different dads?" Derek asked and that was unexpected.

"No, why?"

"Dean said his last name was Campbell."

That was . . . that wasn't . . . "What?"

"Dean Campbell. You called Sam _Winchester_."

Why would he use that name?

"Reid?"

"Campbell is my mother's maiden name."

"What?"

Sam called out to him from just a few feet away, "Bobby didn't tell you?"

Spencer got to his feet. "Tell me what?" He looked to Bobby who only shook his head and looked away avoiding eye contact. "Sam, why is Dean using my mom's maiden name?"

"Because it was our mother's name too," Sam said. "Diana and Mary Campbell. They were sisters, Spencer."

"Wait," Derek said, pointing to Sam then Reid and down to Dean, "You're _cousins_?" He looked to Reid, "You didn't know?"

"I just found out myself," Sam said as an explanation but Spencer turned his face from him and he stared at Bobby.

"You knew? The whole time? Our whole lives?"

"She told me not to—" Bobby began but Spencer just shot his eyes away from him, his arms crossing in front of himself and his gaze to the floor, to Dean.

"Does he know?" He quietly asked.

"No."

Spencer nodded and his bottom lip was pulled to his mouth and he started to chew on it. Dean who had always treated him like family, who'd almost died saving Bobby. The story his mother used to tell him in the height of her episodes had been about her own sister, his aunt he'd never even known about . . . Dean's mother. It was the same scene that was played out in JJ's home the night before. Dean had been four and it had all been real and he'd watched his mother die in front of him. He lay there on the floor so still not knowing how right he was. It all came down to the bloodline didn't it?

One had spent his life battling demons, killing monsters but in the end because he was a good person, because he constantly and consistently gave up bits of himself for others without question and because he could even be _called_ righteous, he had spent almost two generations being tortured in Hell.

One had spent his life trying to get away from battling demons and monsters, desiring only to be regular and ordinary and seeking out humanity but in the end he had been locked for all eternity in an existence comprised solely of battling _demons and monsters_ . . . and he was no longer human.

And as for him, Spencer had spent his years learning math and chemistry and engineering escaping in the hopes to never be like his mother, to never see the path she'd gone down when all that time his mother did exactly what he did now . . .

Saving people. Hunting things.

Here they were, just as fate had wanted them regardless of their own personal wants or dreams or desires . . .

Those Campbell Boys.

* * *

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	11. Flesh and Blood and Bone

**Chapter Eleven**

**Flesh and blood and bone**

It had been their room whenever their dad dropped them off in Sioux Falls when they were younger. The long summer months when school was out was usually spent at Bobby's, winter breaks with Christmas and New Year's were spent with Pastor Jim. John had missed one too many Yuletides and his children had spent too many Christmas mornings alone when he'd come to the latter decision. At least with Jim they would get some understanding of Christmas and what it was supposed to mean because John had lost too much of his own faith to be much of a teacher. He was always afraid, in his own silent way, that he'd been too late in acting for Dean. His son's eyes never held any emotion nor betrayed any reaction in churches—they were just wood, stone, metal and glass to him. Sammy had been another story. He always said grace, chastised those who didn't, he dropped off offerings as Dean rolled his eyes and at night Sammy prayed. John never knew and wouldn't know what Sam had prayed and asked for until the day he left them behind.

In the summer they would work on cars, restoring some, scraping others . . . well, no. Dean would work on the cars, Bobby teaching him the trade as Sam dug through any and every book he could find in the South Dakota Library Network but _never_ touching any of the books in Bobby's collection. Sam avoided the library in the house as much as he could only utilizing it when their dad had a job and needed specific research done. Unconsciously he figured that if he avoided the world of hunting then it would eventually reject him so he wouldn't have to find either the courage or the nerve to walk away from it himself and along with it his father and his brother. Of course, consciously he knew the day would come when he would have to make up his mind on the subject. Once he did, regardless of the choice, his life would be fundamentally changed.

If he knew then what he knew now he would have stayed. Reflecting on those three years of indulging in the human condition was almost too much for him now when faced with the prospect of an eternal life. There would be no other woman to erase the pain and loss of Jess, there would be no children for him to raise in a life better than his own. Before, when he was mortal, the prospect of death and going to Heaven thrilled him once he saw what it was. He yearned it for a fleeting moment. Then the idea of spending eternity in Hell was enough of a bolster to him knowing it would keep Lucifer away from the world he loved and had wanted to protect. It actually _meant_ something to him. Now he felt like a drop in a wide blue ocean faced with the same futility he faced growing up as a hunter. He couldn't even heal his brother.

The room was small with a simple and plain wallpaper design in dark colors trimming the walls. There were two twin beds on either side with a bay window between and at the heads of the beds. Dean lay resting on the firmer of the two, the other having a sink in it from years of Sam's jumping when he was a kid. He remembered the reasons behind the jumping, wishing he could fly. Now he almost could.

"I know I should have told you," he said as he watched Dean's calm breathing. "But I don't regret not telling you. You were happy. One of us should be." He looked down to his hands and locked his fingers together, squeezing and waiting for that once familiar look of blood barricaded in his oxygen choked fingers but they remained the same. If he could cry, he would, but like Cas his emotions would have to be on the brink of cutting him down before his body would manifest them physically. "I don't regret my choices either. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I know what would have happened if I didn't." He couldn't explain why he felt the need to explain himself and his actions to his unconscious brother. Maybe the answer was the simple fact that no matter what he said, Dean would see through him, see his own confusion, his own discomfort and his own fears in the realization of what Bobby had relayed to him downstairs: it wasn't over.

It didn't take a lot to understand what was happening from his perspective. He knew all the secrets now, he knew all the truths. They wanted Lucifer out, it was the only explanation. How Spencer fit into it, he didn't know but Sam knew he was the endgame. They had to be planning something that could involve ripping Lucifer from him like cutting out his insides, dissecting his soul but that wasn't the most frightening thing he could imagine. What scared him the most was for them to just pull Lucifer forward, to the fore of Sam's consciousness. Easy, simple, clean and he would be, by his choices in saying _yes_, the cause of the end of the world.

Dean would see that fear the second he looked into his eyes. So Sam kept talking to him, kept trying to find something that sounded like confidence. Something that sounded less like pure and absolute terror.

The road to Hell was paved with not just good intentions but noble ones.

* * *

Spencer watched his mother as she slept. He wasn't ready to verbally filter through all the questions and emotions so he just took calm, slow breaths and cleared his mind. He was seated on an old wood folding chair. She was curled under a light blanket and an oscillating fan blew cool air around the space. He knew the questions he should ask but he knew or at least he could guess at what the answers were.

Why didn't you tell me about your sister? _I told you about her, Spencer. I may not have said she was my sister but I did say_.

It was just like his mom to avoid a direct question like that. He wondered if what he imagined would be the truth. He wondered if she would really still avoid the things he needed to know, even now.

Why didn't you tell me about my relationship to Dean and Sammy? _Would it have changed things?_

What's real anymore? _Sweetheart, you do realize I'm a paranoid schizophrenic and probably the last person you should ask that particular question?_

He pressed his palms to his eyes. Everything he understood of the world was based on scientific reason and rationality. He'd only begun studying philosophy because of its inherent ambiguity. What is ethical, what are rights, what makes some inalienable and can a person actively _do_ something to have a society strip a right from them? Reason and ration hadn't been erased or eradicated in this realization but instead they had been fundamentally changed. It was akin to suddenly discovering that the human body needed nitrogen and not oxygen for respiration. The building blocks and function doesn't change but the key elements did. There were demons. They tortured and killed people. Over the last nine years of service to his country he could say that in that department, humans were capable of the same. Function unchanged—elements vastly different. Demons killed people and people killed people. This was all the exact same but it was obvious, wasn't it? Something _fundamental_ in the terms of the whole entire world, in the placement of the very universe, had changed on this understanding.

Working at the BAU had long left Spencer with a sense of futility in terms of the larger picture. Some people could be saved but his team only received a case when others had not been. There was no cure for mental illness or unreasonable rage or sexual desire triggered by the annihilation of another living person. These were the things he had to accept he couldn't change and he had to take Hotch's advice that he really couldn't save them all. He was alright with that on some level, he was almost sure he was alright with that and now it was confirmed that one day a few months ago it would all have been pointless anyway.

The kidnapped and the abused would find no salvation; the murdered and discarded wouldn't have any use for Earth-based justice. Society would be gone and always the first to go in any dystopian world-theory would be the structure of bureaucracy. With that would be the federal government. People would panic, money loses its value, martial law would be called and in very little time the government would collapse in on the weight of itself. Who would need profiles of serial killers with the undead ravaging every city and town? Who would care about how accurately they could shoot if bullets couldn't take the monsters down?

People would soon turn to hunters and pastors for safety and guidance. This was his new structure, the new fundamentals. The prospect of the end of the world coming at any moment shifted him right out of where he had fit into society for almost ten years. He wasn't brought into this situation because he was an agent. His intellect, his achievements, they meant nothing. He was a member of a family he had known nothing about. He carried a history not in his mind but in his blood and his flesh and in his bones. He could have been anyone in his life. He could have spent the last twenty-nine years in any way and this would all come down to the exact same point with the world facing the exact same end.

He looked to his mother and her peaceful resting face and wondered about that point three months ago when Bobby implied once they got to the house that a bad thing was going to happen but Sam and Dean had stopped it with Sam as a casualty. Nothing more was elaborated on and Sam disappeared upstairs with Dean before Spencer could get any details. He was still too upset with Bobby to say anything to him so he just inquired as to where his mom was and he left Bobby and Derek in the kitchen. He wanted answers, he needed the truth once and for all but his mom was fast asleep. He didn't have to wonder if she were exhausted by the night's events, that was clear. He had feared for her for so long that he hadn't had the heart to wake her. The anger at being lied to had faded on seeing her like that.

For Spencer, a state of mindless emptiness just meant he wasn't conscious of his minds activities but it remained very active. When he woke himself out of his moments of stillness he would have a set of thoughts spanning from questions he didn't ask and answers he'd never made. At that moment he remained with only one question that didn't have an answer. It was a question that relied too heavily on hindsight so he knew he would refrain from asking her when she woke. The asking would serve no purpose but to make her feel bad about something she would have had no control over.

You couldn't protect me from this world. Could I have done more in my life if I had been a part of it?

Spencer raised one foot up onto the seat of the chair and held it close to his chest, his forehead on his knee. His eyes were staring off to the side and he cleared his mind again knowing he would only wake out of it later on with more excuses.

* * *

Derek had been raised with certain beliefs but when you were child who sought help from those who had promised God to protect you and they didn't, you not only lost faith in man but also in God. He hadn't been saved then but he was saved now. He didn't know what that meant but he didn't think about it too much. He had to take Dean's advice. He had to wait until what happened to him in his apartment hit him before he could get introspective. He couldn't be thinking about life and the meaning of it with what happened hanging over him. Dean was right: it would just be him trying to ignore the thing right in front of him. How could he deal with his underlying emotions without facing the most serious thing facing him?

"I see your brain turning," Bobby said, dropping down a plate of eggs on the table as Derek finished up on the bacon. They'd already spent time talking about what happened to him and what was going on with Reid while the kid was out cold in his apartment. That was the time for brief and practical questions; things Derek could handle during his recovery from his time with Meg. Now, in the quiet of the still house, the other kinds of questions occupied him. "Diana, she talks about you," Bobby said, slipping bread into the toaster.

"She does?"

"Kid writes to her about his life on a daily basis and when she gets her lucid moments she reads 'em and passes along the weekly newsletter version to me."

"You guys go back?"

"Spencer was three when I hoofed my ass to Vegas to meet the Keeper of the Campbell library."

"The what?"

Bobby jerked his head towards the entryway to the study and Derek, lowering the heat under the skillet, wiped his hands on a dish towel and slid back the pocket doors to reveal a decent sized space that was once the family room but had been converted to a storehouse for books. Stacks and stacks, shelves and piles of parchment, no discernable order or sense.

Derek let out a low whistle.

Bobby nodded, "A few of these are older than the Magna Carta."

"Reid is gonna have a field day," he said. "So, wait, this is his family's collection?"

"I've made some personal acquisitions but for the most part, yeah. Unless you've got a couple million in disposable cash and a Vatican insider, you can't build a library like this on your own."

Derek's mouth opened a little and he was tempted to whistle again. "Figures the kid would come from a family of librarians." Bobby chuckled before motioning him back to the kitchen. Derek looked to him, setting the bacon to drain. "So you were, hell, younger than me when you started?" He asked. There was something quiet and withdrawn behind the question.

"You've been a cop since you were what? Twenty something? Learn the other half and you're set."

Morgan gestured to the study, "If all that's the other half—"

"One case at a time," Bobby reassured him. "This shitstorm is all demons so all you need to know is demons."

Derek thought back to that morning, to the feeling of pure helplessness at the hands of Meg and wanting, _needing_ that feeling to never again repeat. "You'll teach me?"

"Cut your teeth on it. You and the kid need a crash course ASAP."

The stairs creaked with sounds of steps and they watched as Spencer made his way downstairs.

"Hungry?" Derek asked as Bobby handed him plates from the cupboard.

"Starving," Spencer replied, adjusting his glasses. He had been the lone audience member to his stomach's singing since his last purge back in the hospital. It baffled him how long ago that felt but it was only a few hours ago. He went to the sink and washed his hands before he got forks and knives, setting them by the plates. Turning he locked eyes with Bobby and simply said, "You'll tell me the truth? All of it?"

"Everything I _can_ tell you—"

"Damn it, Bobby—"

"Dean and Sam'll want to tell you their stuff on their time and I can't get beyond myself with that. That boy'll rip my arm off this time," he said referring to Dean.

Spencer nodded, knowing it was true and also knowing Dean would tell him just to get all of this squared away. "Family history then. I'm not too sure my mom—"

Bobby shrugged, "Knowing Annie, prolly not." He pointed to the table and they sat. "Alright. Go ahead and eat. This ain't a short story."

* * *

He felt awful. It was the single worst feeling he'd had since he returned from Hell. Even when Zachariah had been at his most sadistic, this feeling dominated the comparison. His throat felt like scorched sandpaper wilting in the Nevadan desert. He was lying down on what he imagined wasn't supposed to feel like razor wire. He felt two parts hot and one part cold as the sensation of chills and sweats broke out over his brow every few moments. He could _feel_ himself heeling and that wasn't a sensation a human body should be conscious of. The body healed slowly for a reason and that was because the process hurt just as much or worse than the injury that created it. The body borrowed cheated and blatantly stole from other parts of the body just to reassemble torn flesh and internal structures. Those structures were drawn together, moved in a linkage and then bound with millions of nearly invisible sutures. He felt it all and because of that his mind kept him still and unmoving to drift in and out of consciousness as he came together.

In his moments of wakefulness when he was too weak to open his eyes, he could hear Sam's voice speaking to him. He could piece the story together himself from the bits he heard and the bits his brother never knew he was aware of. Lucifer _had_ escaped, crawling out of Hell with Sam's meat on his back. Sam had spent a week in the Hotel De La Inferno and Dean gladly drifted away before he could hear the details of what was done to his little brother. He came back when Sam was detailing how he could see Dean and Lisa and Ben seated to dinner and he, trapped inside Satan, was watching them from just outside. Dean shivered hard but his body refused to move. Then Cas, Dean's faithful guardian archangel, came through and used Sam's body as Lucifer's prison seeing as Hell was _obviously_ not working.

His brother was an angel. It should have been impossible, humans were a whole different race of creature than angels were but with the darkness inside of him, the upper orders of angels decided there could only be one recourse in handling Samuel, as he was now called. He was ordained, accepted to the flock and without illusions both Sam and Cas understood the point was to keep your friends close but your enemies closer. The angels in the higher orders accepted him to watch him, knowing the thread of reality was safer when he was being trained in their ways and not let loose to the influence of demons. Nothing Sam could say would convince them of his sincerity in being nothing like Lucifer but all they would say to him is that it was written to be and so it would eventually be. If it wasn't now or a year from now, it could be a million years down the road but it was to be. Sam wanted to prove them wrong all the while fearing they were right.

Dean lost bits and pieces of the rest of the story but when he got around to Diana Reid and who she had been before, who she had been in a previous life and who Spencer was to them, his body and mind couldn't balance what he was processing and balance his healing at the same time and so his eyes rolled and twitched under the lids as his body screamed at even that slight motion.

Grimacing and breathing hard, Dean cracked open his eyes and squinted across the room to the solemn stare of his brother.

"Dean," Sam said, moving to him and crouching low to stay in his line of sight.

"Oh, you're right," Dean said, a whimper breaking through his lips as he spoke. "You're shit at healing."

Sam blanched. "You were out—"

"I _looked_ out," he whispered.

"How much did you hear?"

Licking his dry lips, Dean closed his eyes again as a migraine started to form at the base of his skull. "Just about everything. You sure as hell talk a lot to people you figure can't hear you. You say crap to the people who actually _want_ to hear from you." Dean shook his head just a little from side to side, "You've been back this whole time?"

"I didn't want you to worry. After everything that's happened, you earned a regular life—"

Dean kept his eyes pinched closed as a hot burning pain warmed his core. Healing felt like death times two. "I got that part, Sam, but didn't you think that the _fact_ that you were back meant something?"

"I know and I could handle that, Dean. I'm part of a bigger team now—"

"Really? That why Spencer's life's been flipped upside down and inside out?"

"I didn't know he was—"

"A target or family?" Sam was quiet after that. Forcing his eyes open, Dean squinted at the light flooding the room. "He's family, Sam. You know what the hell that means. They ripped Adam out of his grave because he was family and dad wasn't part of any particular hunting line. All they wanted him for was because he was your brother."

Sam grit his teeth, "I know."

"They're fucking with his life the same way—"

"I know, Dean!" Sam said as he pushed away from the bed. "Same way they fucked with mine. I know."

"Jess was all you had and they took her," Dean said, curling up to sitting, his face as white as snow. "He's got a lot more people to mess with."

Sam's shoulders sank and he just breathed, "I swear I thought it was over."

Dean brought a hand up to his face and steadied himself from the sensation of rocking on a boat. "Now you're just lying," he said.

"God damn it, Dean! What do you want me to say? What the hell do you want me to do? You want me to open up a Devil's Gate and walk back in? Hand myself over to Hell and see what they can figure out?"

"Sammy—"

"I did everything right, everything I was supposed to do and now what? Everything is shit anyway?" Tears were coming to his eyes. Finally. They made him feel human again. "I don't know what to do so I'm doing the best I can."

Dean put his feet to the ground and pushed himself to standing. His stomach stretched like rubber over peanut brittle. He hissed, clutching at his center. "Stop it," he ordered, watching his brother falling apart before his eyes. "I'm not blaming you for being here but damn it Sam, you should have told me. Okay, I had three months, that's fine but that's time we could have spent figuring this out. The only angel I trust is Cas and he knows about as much of this as we do."

Sam shook his head, "You still don't trust Heaven?"

"I'm glad you've got shiny new friends, Sam, but no. I trust upstairs about as much as I trust downstairs. You, with Satan driving the controls, pop out of a pit that was supposed to be sealed tighter than a rat's ass the _same day_ you went into that fucking pit? Seriously? No Sam," he added with dripping sarcasm, "I can't imagine how the hell they missed the little fact of the apocalypse _not_ being over."

Sam opened his mouth to say something but he couldn't find the words. It was true. The signs and symbols he and Cas had been tracking had been all their own work done on their own time.

"You still think it's a set up?"

"Let's see . . . did they ever find God? Did they ever get that paradise they were feening over? No? Then yeah Sam, I think it's still a set up."

"I—" he began but for the first time in a while he felt very ill.

"Sam?"

"I—I'm one of them now, Dean," he said, sinking down to the mattress. "There's no going back from this."

"Sammy—" Dean said, stepping towards him when his eyes rolled and his body went limp. Sam appeared beside him and caught him before he dropped to the floor. "God," Dean said through shivering teeth, his eyes clamped. "You really need to figure out this healing thing 'cause this is ass."

Sam frowned and set his brother back to the bed. "I'm trying but the power's pretty . . . intense. I have to be careful."

Dean froze, understanding what Sam was saying. The angelic energy he was tapped into was Lucifer's. "Serious?"

"Yeah. He was," Sam pinched his features before saying, "impossibly powerful."

Dean nodded, "Yeah."

They sat next to each other in perfect silence.

* * *

"All of these?" Spencer looked around to the books, his mouth wide. Some of the texts, he could see from yards away, were older than English. He knew the value of books, he knew the cost of volumes through the ages and so many of these were worth more than an entire block of homes in Georgetown. Rare, old, specific. This was amazing.

"Yep," Bobby said, watching his eyes light up. Neither Sam nor Dean had ever looked that way when faced with the collection they never knew was their heritage. He'd always wondered who he'd leave as the next Keeper and seeing Spencer's reaction he knew he had his answer. "How's your Latin?"

Spencer picked up a newer looking volume, afraid of even touching the older ones and he flipped through it. "I can read it, no problem. But I can only really say that exorcism prayer and I can't understand it spoken."

"We'll have to teach you," Bobby said with a nod and then looking to Derek he said, "both of you."

"Latin?" Derek asked. "Why would demons recognize Latin as the exorcism language? There were demons before the Romans, weren't there?"

"Well, how's your Greek then?" Bobby asked with a grin. "Or how about your Sumerian? We have a ton in Hindi and a bunch in Hebrew. My Avestan is kinda rusty but I'm sure yours is fine—"

With a concessionary smile Derek said, "You know what I mean. What about English?"

"Too modern a language to have hit the annals. German and Celtic is closest you'll get. The English ones exist somewhere, no doubt, but I just don't know any. You want one in English you'll have to write one. Just so you know, exorcism prayers are less prayer and more spell and have to be written and sealed by a very powerful faith or magic or both. It's what makes them universal. The faith and magic of the person writing it goes into the words so the person reciting it doesn't have to have ironclad faith themselves."

Spencer nodded, understanding, "That's why it worked when I said it."

Bobby shrugged, "You want to exorcise a demon in English you better hope your faith is unshakable."

Derek crossed his arms. He guessed he was going to be learning Latin then.

Spencer looked up to Morgan from the book in his hands with a shocked expression on his face, "Oh God, I was supposed to call Hotch and—"

"I called him when you were out. Garcia told him about the family emergency and I told him I was going to follow you given what happened last night."

"What did he say?"

"He's freaked but he's Hotch so he'll never say anything about it."

It was weird to think about having to just leave everyone and everything behind after the night before. He kept thinking about JJ and Henry and what would happen to them now.

"I'm going to have to contact Bennington before they put out a missing persons on my mom—"

"That," a voice said from behind them and they all jumped and spun around to see Castiel at the entrance, "has already been dealt with." Cas frowned, "I went back to the apartment but you'd all left. Did something happen?"

* * *

"Think you can walk?" Sam asked his brother as he helped him to his feet.

"Not alone or my face is about to kiss wood," Dean said which was his way of asking for help. They made it three feet when Castiel appeared in the room before them. "Oh thank God," Dean mumbled as Cas laid hands on him. The excruciating pain of healing was gone and Dean's face got its color back and he managed to waggle his brows before pushing away from his brother's arms. "And _that's_ how it's done." Looking to Sam he said, "You have much to learn, young padawan."

"Funny Dean," Sam groused. "Probably not the best time to compare me to Anakin Skywalker, yeah?"

Dean sobered very quickly, "Right."

Castiel just watched them having no idea what they were even talking about and well used to that feeling. "Bobby told me what happened. It makes no sense."

"Um, which part?" Dean asked.

"The part where you weren't a target."

"Thanks Cas. Thanks a heap."

Sam offered, "They figured Heaven wouldn't just let him die so what was the point?"

Dean frowned and shook his head, "They know Michael's burning on a spit in the fire so maybe not?"

"Exactly," Cas said. "There's a reason I've still been protecting you, Dean. You're open game to demons and Heaven won't intercede in your resurrection."

Dean paused at that and wasn't sure how to respond. Castiel was still circling his radius because he was protecting him despite Heaven. He gave a strange relieved exhale knowing it had nothing to do with his ties to Michael. Sure, a get out of Heaven-free card was handy and all but it came with provisions and restrictions like sell your flesh to an archangel.

"They haven't gone after me since—" he said.

"I've made sure they had no idea where you've been," Cas explained and Dean was surprised at that. He knew he was off the radar but he had been sure that was his own precautions in action not Cas's active involvement. He was really starting to define the phrase _guardian angel_. "Bobby never told me you were getting involved in this and now the demons know you're here."

Dean was understanding where his worry was coming from and it seeped into him as well. "That's what's freaking you out, isn't it? They see me in their scope and they still aim for Bobby."

"Yes. You of all people should have been killed today."

"Which means . . ."

"Whatever is going on, they want you alive."

* * *

Derek and Bobby went through the beginning of an exorcism prayer then turned to the practical uses of iron and salt against demons. Spencer read through those books in languages he could not only recognize but also read. Grimoires, histories, the different versions of Gray's anatomy for all sorts of creatures. There were so many types of monsters on Earth that just reading about them threw a chill up his spine. Knowing that there were different types of human killers and different forms of psychosis was one thing that almost overwhelmed society as it was but the fact that the world also crawled with so many different _specie_ of killer, whose only motivations were to maim and kill, was overwhelming.

He understood why his Uncle John, now a literal title, had Sam and Dean and their entire existence below the radar. He understood the charges that had been brought against them and why they'd been on the FBI most wanted list. The things they did to protect people could be read so horribly when out of context. He read in one book that bones had to be salted and burned to vanquish spirits so grave desecration outside of the framework of hunting sounded psychotic. A murder charge meant nothing when your body was copied by a skinwalker. They got paid nothing for what they did so Spencer couldn't attack them for the credit card fraud. He couldn't explain the guilt he felt, going through all of the books that explained away each one of their 'crimes' and remembering how he had reacted three years ago when they appeared on FBI radar.

Pushing the memory away Spencer thought back to his wild and detailed family tree. To know that an ancestress of his had been a world-famous vampire hunter was . . . freaking cool. He had to admit, that was just cool. To know that her mother had written a spell book that could only be used by those in her bloodline, that his family was essentially matriarchal because of her was so odd and wild and strange . . .

"Bobby?"

"Yeah?"

Spencer held up the calf-skin spell book and frowned, "There are pages missing."

Bobby immediately averted his eyes and snapped his fingers to Morgan who frowned at him before averting his eyes likewise. "Yeah, you'll have to talk that over with your momma."

"Bobby, you can't do a spell from it but you can talk about it—" Spencer whined.

"Boy, you know what boils are? You know how they feel when they're covering ninety-seven percent of your body? Keep that thing away from me; the boils were the last straw."

Spencer pursed his lips and sighed. "Fine." He put away the spell book and saw some oddly modern binding peeking up at him from the corner of the room. Narrowing his eyes on it he moved towards it to see a stack of trade novels piled in a cardboard box. Bending down Spencer rifled through them until he reached number one in what appeared to be a series: _Supernatural by Carver Edlund_. Turning it over he read the blurb: _Along a lonely __California__ highway, a mysterious Woman in White lures men to their deaths . . . a terrifying phenomenon that may be Sam and Dean's_—Spencer paused his reading at that. "What?" _that may be Sam and Dean's first clue to their father's whereabouts_.

"Bobby?"

"Yeah?"

"What is this?" He asked with a deep frown on his face and the book held up in his hand.

"Oh," Bobby said with a sigh. "Hard to explain. How fast can you read through them?"

Spencer analyzed the size and thickness of the books, the page white space and the quantity of volumes before saying, "Less than two hours?"

"Get to it then."

"But—"

"Trust me, you'll understand."

He only made it halfway through the first volume when he heard Dean, Sam and Cas walking down the staircase. He couldn't believe what he held. He had read the story of his aunt, Mary Winchester, and it was the same exact story his mother had told him nearly two decades earlier in the prologue to the book in his hands. How was it possible that these books seemed to tell the story of Sam and Dean from an insider's perspective? He was baffled, confused and eager to learn more of the years he'd missed away from them.

Dean came into the study first and immediately saw what Spencer was reading. He looked to Bobby. "Seriously? Kid needs to learn to defend himself against demons and you hand him pulp fiction?"

"How is this possible?" Spencer asked, hefting up the box of books to rest on the desk. He narrowed his eyes on the cover, "Are one of you Carver Edlund?"

"What? You think _we_ wrote this crap? Hell no," Dean said.

Spencer looked between him and Sam and seemed perplexed, "It's not true?"

Sam shrugged, "Yeah, it is. The prose is a little—"

"Purple," Spencer nodded, "But it's factual?"

"Yeah. That's our lives since Dad disappeared, in a nutshell."

Derek perked up at that. "What?"

Spencer eagerly nodded, "I read that he left but the book doesn't explain why. I'm not finished though . . ."

"You could ask us," Dean grumbled.

"Would you tell me the truth?"

Dean looked away and rocked a little on his heels. "Most of it."

"Thanks, I'll stick to the books." He looked to the volume in his hand and asked, "So, Carver Edlund?"

"Pen name for a friend of ours. A prophet."

Morgan shook his head a little. "A prophet writing dime store paperbacks?"

Dean gestured to him feeling vindicated, "Exactly!"

"One day," Castiel said to the room in general and they quieted as he spoke. "It will be known as the Winchester gospels, so it is said."

Dean snorted, "Gonna have to go through a name change then." Castiel shrugged.

"Dean?" Spencer said, waving the book. "About that _cosmic significance_?"

"Ha, now you learn to tell a joke?"

Spencer grinned.

"If he's a prophet," Derek began, moving over to Reid. "Does that mean he saw all this before it happened?"

"Pretty much," Sam said. "He gets headaches and he's pretty much jacked into our lives."

Derek gestured to the room, "So, he saw all of this happen already?"

Dean and Sam paused, thinking. They hadn't seen Chuck in a while thinking that since the apocalypse had ended so had his visions but if it hadn't ended . . .

"We need to go see Chuck," Dean said, looking to Sam who nodded in agreement. It was the best way to hash out what was really going on.

"Chuck?" Spencer asked.

"The writer. His real name's Chuck Shurley—"

Spencer's mouth hung open and a chill passed through him, "Did you say Chuck Shur—"

The house phone started to ring. Bobby reached over and pulled up the cordless that sat on his desk. "Yeah? . . . who is this?" They all saw the color rush from Bobby's cheeks. Pulling the phone from his ear he hit the _speaker_ button.

"Hello boys, having a good morning?"

Derek didn't know he was sitting until he was in a chair, Sam's hand on his elbow. Spencer frowned at the voice and looked up to see the expressions on everyone's faces, especially Morgan's. It was in Morgan's wide and fearful eyes that he immediately knew who the female voice belonged to.

Meg.

When no one replied she said, "It's tragic you're all so rude. Good morning to you anyway though I already said my _hellos_ to Derek, didn't I sweet thing?"

Derek said nothing and tried to fight against the memories that were now assaulting him. He stared ahead and just tried to keep breathing. He knew the time would come for him to face this but he didn't expect it to be so soon.

"Oh, honey I know I ripped out your tongue but I'm pretty sure your celestial Dr. Frankenstein put you all back together by now."

Morgan stood from his seat and went to the kitchen, closing the door behind him.

"Oh, was it something I said?" She purred.

"Listen you crazy bitch—" Dean began.

"Wow Dean, after all this time you still can't think of anything better than that? You need new writers."

"I _will_ kill you," he swore and she just laughed.

"Baby, you have tried. Deal with it, you're stuck with me. I have a message for you. You have until midnight tonight to hand yourself and your baby cousin over to us or we'll start indiscriminately killing any and everyone who's ever known him. Nice touch with the guardians but you think you can protect everyone connected to everyone? Take your boss for example, Spencer. He has a son who is barely around him, doesn't he? Did anyone think to assign a winged freak to little Jack Hotchner? Then there's Derek's mommy and his sisters. Aww, he'd be all alone in the world if say, they were turned into convenient bite-sized pieces. Your friend Emily has parents she _might_ miss, who knows? Garcia's boytoy Kevin, pretty sure his ass isn't covered by the angel family plan. The list goes on—"

Spencer swallowed hard. They couldn't get to his friends but they were threatening to go after every person connected to them. Secondary connections were vast and they would have no idea where they'd hit. He didn't think he could live with himself if he knew he were the cause of pain to any member of his team.

"What do you want with us?" Dean asked her though gritted teeth.

"Thought that was obvious. You must know why we want you, Dean, don't you? You couldn't be as stupid as I was sure you were. I swear I thought I was just being mean."

He didn't reply but if his early supposition that it wasn't over was true then yes, he knew why they wanted him in terms of larger picture but the minor details were lost on him. Michael was gone. He no longer fit. "And Spencer?"

"Oh, we just want him so we can thank him for bringing you out of hiding."

Without another word, she ended the call and the line went dead.

Bait? Spencer shook his head and swallowed hard. Bait? All of this, these last sixteen hours, was so he could be used as . . .

"She's lying," Cas said, his deep voice cutting through the stillness of the room. "They wouldn't have asked for you as well if your only role was to lure Dean out."

"Lesson number one," Sam said, anger breaking through nearly every part of him but he kept it restrained. "Demons lie."

"The bigger question is why," Castiel said, turning to Spencer. "We all know why they want to get their hands on Dean. The question now is we know they want you but why lie as to why?"

"I don't know," Spencer said, his voice unsteady.

"There has to be something particular about you—"

"I don't know," he repeated before looking at Dean. "You said it was about the bloodline. That has to be it."

"Yeah, but that's the problem. I know they want me. There are a million reasons to count from, revenge being a lame one but it's a reason and for a demon a valid one. You on the other hand, you might actually have a role to play in this too and if you go out there, it might mean the end of everything."

Panic was getting to him. "I don't understand what you mean, how?" And he looked down to the book in his hands, "And how does Doc Shurley fit into all of this?"

Sam and Dean, Cas and Bobby all looked to one another. Dean stepped forward, "_Doc_ Shurley?"

"You met him; remember that day in the library? The day Leo died? Doc Shurley, my English professor." Glancing to the book Spencer said, "His talent obviously wasn't for storytelling—"

A memory came over Dean and the image of a small bearded nebbish dude flooded his vision. It was Chuck but from almost twenty years ago. He frowned. It was Chuck looking the exact same.

"The day Leo died . . ." Dean mumbled not understanding what he was recalling; sure his mind was playing tricks on him.

Spencer was deep in thought, the memory passing over him. "I knew something strange was happening when your pendant started to glow but I dismissed—"

Dean, Bobby and Sam's reactions were transparent. They were overwhelmed and bowled over by what Spencer had just said but it was Castiel who quickly stepped forward, his eyes wide, "What did you say?"

Spencer looked to them suddenly feeling like a fish in a bowl. "Dr. Chuck Shurley was my English teacher back in high school. One day the three of us were in the library and he bumped into us. Dean's necklace started to glow but the second it started something happened and it was gone so I thought it was just an odd reflection but it can't just be a coincidence that a man named Chuck Shurley is the writer of these books and another Chuck Shurley was also my teacher. The chances of that happening are one in a—"

Dean had reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Inside, beyond the pictures of Lisa and Ben, were the few photos he'd saved of his life before. There was a photo of Sam, one of Bobby, one of Cas looking like a junior grim reaper and there towards the back was one of he and Sam and Chuck.

He flipped the photo over to Spencer and asked, "I keep seeing this face when I remember that day in the library but I'm not the one with the eidetic memory. Is this him?"

Taking the wallet in his hand, Spencer stared at a face that belonged in a time capsule. "How is that possible? He hasn't aged. Are prophets immortal or something?"

Castiel didn't know what he was feeling. He didn't know what to even attempt to feel. Of course the pendant wouldn't have worked now if it had been exposed years earlier. He could almost feel tears forming behind his eyes but the sensation was odd and foreign and he wasn't sure he liked it.

"No," Sam said, his eyes wide with the realization. "Prophets aren't immortal."

"Then—"

"He was never a prophet, Spencer," Dean said, a small grin quirking the side of his lip. "That sneaky son of a—"

"I don't understand. If he's not a prophet, how did he know all of this?" Spencer asked, gesturing to the book.

"He wrote it," Castiel said, very quietly.

"He—"

Bobby placed his hands on Spencer's shoulders and sat him down before informing him. "Apparently you learned high school English from . . . _well_ . . ."

Castiel broke out into a warm and encompassing smile, saying, "My father."

"Your father?"

Dean smirked, "Yeah, the _which art in Heaven_ one."

Spencer was beyond confused.

* * *

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	12. What if God Was One of Us?

**Chapter Twelve**

**What if God was one of us?**

Spencer stared at the small rundown house with the small rundown lawn in the rundown little neighborhood in Mount Olive, New Jersey. It was almost exactly like Doc Shurley's house in Vegas if not older and more weather-beaten. This was the house directly in the middle of his paper route. When studying only took less than half an hour and your mom forbade video games on top of not having many friends he had a lot of time on his hands. Doc had been the one to suggest the job in the first place and Spencer realized in that moment just how much of his life in those years had been gently 'guided' by his mentor. His job, his after school activities, even his college choice had been casual suggestions from a man who Spencer so regarded that _casual suggestions_ never were and could never be for a boy of eleven who'd just lost his own father.

And He knew that.

He didn't know what he was feeling.

The house stood before him as if it had been transported whole on the back of a truck two thousand, five hundred miles from Nevada to New Jersey.

Dean glanced to him and took in the shocked expression on his face. "Not what you expected?" He asked as a joke but he could tell he was way off.

"No," Spencer said in a quiet voice. It was so much more than 'no.'

"What?"

"It's His house, from Vegas. Same house, house number, same porch, same everything." Spencer walked with quick and long strides to the latticed crawl-space under the porch and, kneeling down in a low crouch, he stretched his arm through a gap in the wooden lattice and reached around for a few seconds before pulling out his hand, a dusty closed fist around the neckband attached to a shiny metal whistle.

"How did you—" Dean began.

"I left it here, before I left for orientation at Cal Tech. I came back for it at Thanksgiving but the house was gone. It looked demolished." He shook his head. "His letters were forwarded but I never got His new address. He wrote that they'd get to Him, I never asked."

"You've been penpaling?"

"Up 'til I joined the bureau. He said He was working on an old project and to give Him some time to finish it up. I assumed it was His way of saying He was taking an extended sabbatical."

"Guess I should raise my hand as part of that _old project_," Dean grumbled.

"He will not be here," Castiel said, the anxiety in his eyes betraying his words. They could both see the hope inside of him at the prospect of not finding the house empty. Dean could only guess at what he was feeling. His own dad had only been gone less than a year and before that year was over he at least understood the reasons behind his disappearance. He and Sam knew that together they'd be okay without him but for Cas, who had been faced with a war amongst his own, without knowing why his Father had left them, this moment, Dean knew, must have been killing him on the inside.

"And if He is?" Dean asked him. To the both of them it looked as if the angel had just swallowed a stone.

"If He is . . . I will . . ."

Dean rolled his eyes, "Stutter incoherently?"

"Possibly."

Spencer pocketed the whistle and walked up the familiar stairs, Dean beside him. Cas hesitated for just a moment at the bottom of the steps before taking a deep breath and moving his shaking legs up to the porch.

There was a key on a string lodged between the door and the jamb. Dean tugged on it and it released easily in his hand. Eyebrows up he glanced to Spencer who quirked his mouth to the side.

"I suppose breaking in would be, uh, morally wrong?" Spencer hazarded a guess.

Dean held up the key, "That and He's not home." They both snuck a quick glance to Cas who hid his disappointment well but not well enough. "Or, you know . . . in the shower." Slipping the key into the lock, Dean opened the door and they walked into the house. It was as it always had been; messy, everything out of order, faint smell of old coffee and hard liquor. There was something different about it, Dean and Cas noticed. There had always been an overpowering feeling of gloom in Chuck's home before, marked by a keen solitude. Now it felt untangled from the hold of whatever dissatisfaction had been oppressing it. To Spencer, minus the messiness and the boozy smell, it seemed exactly the same. Not even the furniture had changed. The computer was a new addition and the television was an upgrade but two decades had that effect on technology.

"Well," Dean began, putting the key in his pocket. "He knew we were coming which, _given_, doesn't mean a hell of a lot, but still."

"You expect something," Cas said which wasn't a question but didn't feel like a statement. Instead it was purely a reflection of his own feelings which mirrored Dean's.

"What are we looking for?" Spencer asked, walking through the living room.

"Dude, I'm not really equipped to be figuring out God but I know _Chuck_. I'll check the computer, Cas you check the DVD player—"

"You think God left a DVD?"

Dean shrugged, "Gabriel did."

"You knew Gabriel?"

"Kid, this moment is _so_ much bigger than me knowing Gabriel. Yeah?"

Spencer swallowed and nodded, adding that to the list of things he had to ask about at a later time. Then again, if the answer had been written down in the books back at Bobby's he wouldn't even have to ask. "I'll check the answering machine?" He offered.

"Yeah," Dean said, nodding. "It's over—"

With a sigh, Spencer rolled his eyes and said, "I know where it is."

"Right." Dean turned on the computer as Castiel rifled through the cases by the television. "What was His angle with you anyway?" Dean called out to Spencer who had moved to the den.

"You make Him sound like a petty conman," Spencer mumbled, seeing the bright double zeros indicating that there were no messages.

Dean's cheeks reddened as Cas shot him a withering stare. "I'm just saying, you were close. He got close to me too but I wasn't eleven at the time."

Spencer absently hummed, "Now you're making Him sound like the neighborhood pedophile." He poked through the stacks of opened and unopened mail. If looks could kill, Castiel would have sent Dean to Heaven in that instant.

"I'm just saying!" Dean said, his hands up to Cas. He was sure he heard Castiel growl as he looked away and back to the DVD cases.

"I don't know," Spencer said, oblivious to the exchange from the adjacent room. "My dad left a couple of days before junior year started and I was dealing with all of that and my mom and there Doc was, first period of the first day. I'd never gotten along with my previous English teachers but He was—"

"Cool," Dean said, recalling his first and up to that point forgotten first impression of Doc Chuck Shurley.

"Yeah. He was also my guidance counselor and I could talk to Him. My mother hated therapy and asking people for help so I figured there must have been something to it," he smiled to himself. "At the point in my life when I really needed someone, He was there," Spencer said, his words drifting as aggravation started to seep inside of him. In a low voice he said, "I don't know what would have happened to me if He wasn't there. I swear I was almost tempted to run away and find you guys when it got really bad." He took a deep breath. "All that time He was . . ." he didn't know how to finish that. "Maybe that was the angle." And the words felt bitter on his lips. What had Doc been doing those last two years of high school when Spencer had been in desperate need of someone sane and rational and comforting who obviously could no longer be his mother?

"No," Dean said, hating himself for even planting that seed. "He was there for you. Prolly saved your life." Then he huffed to himself, "Run away to live with _us_? Must have lost your mind." Louder he said, "Your life as a hunter would have been _short_."

"I could be a hunter," Spencer protested but his voice was absent as he spotted a copy of Proust that was identical in everyway to the one he had back at his apartment, dings, dents and all.

Dean watched as the desktop came to life and he muttered, "Yeah, but are you recyclable?"

"I couldn't say," Spencer picked up the book and under it was a lime green Post-it note that read, 'Top drawer.' "I've only died once. That's probably only a reboot and not a recycle."

"Hold up, kid. You died?" Dean asked just as the background image appeared which was a photo of Dean and Chuck smiling at the camera from some kind of camp in the woods. There was a signed message at the bottom in Chuck's handwriting which read, 'TP Warriors 2014.'

"Like Bobby said, we all have at least once," Spencer replied as he opened up the top drawer to the desk to see a sleek iPad with a blue bow stuck on its side and a small label that hung from it which read, 'For Spencer.'

Dean sat down at the computer and took a deep and long breath, calming his nerves. He was sure his hands were shaking and he had to hold onto the desk to steady himself. It was a message he was sure he'd have to be blind and deaf not to notice or understand. Sometime, years ahead and in a now alternate future, there were four people he knew from his life and three had changed for the worse. He himself had become a man he didn't recognize, a man devoid of all moral conviction and integrity. For Dean, those were big things and to not even recognize himself within himself had been a painful shock. Then there was Cas playing guru, being a demigod to people who were desperate and seeking some answers in a lost world. He took advantage of that and was far and beyond the Castiel he'd known and had grown to admire. The third was Sam acting as a tailored suit to Satan. There was nothing to say to that, the change was self-explanatory and it wasn't the same person at all. Sam was forever lost.

And the fourth? The one unchanged? A nervous little guy fretting over toilet paper who, through all the changes He'd lived through, all He'd experienced in His world and His reality had remained wholly _Him_ and unchanged. Constant.

Dean didn't remember taking the photo because he never had. It was a construct acting only as a message and that message clearly said to him, _'I've always been there. I always will be.'_

Reality was only just starting to settle in for Dean and it was uncomfortable, exciting, frightening, amazing and awful. Lip service had already been paid but sincerity was encroaching. Chuck really was—

"He left this for me," Spencer said, walking back into the living room, holding up the iPad. "But His desktop's a PC so that eternal question rages on."

Castiel and Dean were about to move over to him when the television suddenly went on and the computer screen buzzed alive as a program started up. The iPad's blank screen lit up. They each stood staring at the grizzled face of Chuck Shurley. His eyes, as always, were gentle and filled with a bubbling anxiety just behind them. There was a look of contentment on His lips that was almost a smile. The background was the image of just opposite His web cam and Dean felt very uncomfortable knowing he was seated in the exact same spot.

No one spoke.

Chuck hummed then sighed.

"Uh," Dean began after the first whole minute. "Trying to think of something to say that doesn't sound _completely_ insane."

"Me too," Spencer concurred. "Thus the extended silence."

Cas sat on the couch and stared at the image on the screen and simply exhaled, "Father?"

Chuck's half smile blossomed. "Hey, Cas," replied the television as Dean and Spencer's screens remained the same.

"That is just weird," Dean said, looking from his screen to Spencer's to Cas'.

"I agree," Spencer nodded.

Castiel's head immediately touched the coffee table in a low reverent bow. Dean and Spencer looked to each other and then back to their respective screens about to follow Cas' lead when Chuck let out an exasperated huff and said, "Don't even," through the desktop and iPad. The boys froze. "Cas, come on," Chuck said to him from the television screen. Castiel perked up with wide, uncertain eyes. "Come on," He cooed like a parent speaking to an infant. Castiel sat up and Dean was taken back with how young and childlike Cas' demeanor instantly was. Dean had always understood the 'Father' thing as literal, i.e. God was their Father, but it was on a level the same literal-meaning as saying God was _everything's_ Father being the creator of _everything_ but he realized right then that 'Father' also meant the guy who probably quite literally tucked them to angel-bed at night and read them stories if that stuff happened up there and took them to ball games if Heaven had its own versions. It never occurred to him that God could be all of that to all of them but he then also understood that . . . this was God. He can be anything and anyone to anybody He damn well wanted to be.

Confirmation. Spencer didn't know what confirmation would have felt like and he was almost sure he had received it before when he laid his fingers on a whistle under a house that was a country away from where he'd last seen it but this was Doc Shurley being _exactly_ Doc Shurley but concurrently being someone else, some greater _something_ else just by the way, the force, the connection He had to Castiel. The helplessness He brought out of him who had been, up to that point, the most amazing creature Spencer had ever conceived of. For goodness sake, _Athens_ had once bowed before the angel who now looked on to his Dad like a chastised child. Wisdom and Warfare sat in awe of the scruffy little man Spencer had discussed Gogol and Pushkin with. The man he had debated Milton and Faulkner with. It was unsettling but that was, of course, to be expected given the present circumstance. Actually, given the present circumstance he was grateful he wasn't far beyond _unsettled_ and square into _unresponsive_.

"It has been so difficult without you," Cas continued in a voice that was a shadow of his own. "Everyone is in confusion."

"But you're doing so well," Chuck said. "As long as one of you can figure it out, I know the rest of you will be okay. You're not just working off of faith anymore Cas, you're full steam ahead with conviction and that's amazing given these last couple of years. Doubts and hesitations are natural but in the end, look at you, you're right here."

It was there that Dean asked the one question he'd always wanted to ask, but now that he was really and truly face to face with God, never imagined he ever _could_ dare to ask, "Is all of this a test?" He felt every drop of blood in his body freeze the moment the words passed his lips. He wasn't sure he wanted an answer either way.

Chuck almost looked both pleased and excited when He heard Dean's question, "Wow. I was sure you'd ask it but you know how fickle _choice_ is, the odds were against it. No,_ l__ife_ is not a test, it never was. This place was supposed to be fun. There is a ton of fun to be had on Earth it's almost insane."

It was Spencer's turn to speak through the lump in his throat. "There's—" he swallowed. "There's more than just fun here." He shrugged. "But you know that."

With a sigh, Chuck said, "Yeah, I know. It's that whole choice thing all over. The whole apple in the garden thing was just an allegory for choice. I mean, I make decisions. By nature, they're all the right decisions. You should see me at Atlantic City and leaving Vegas was _hard_. It's just how it works with me but most people wouldn't want me living their lives for them and making their choices. I mean, I can make _suggestions_ but people freak out when someone implies that I make their decisions. The common reaction is, _wow you're craz_y or, _I don't care what your religion says you lemming_. But that's the thing: when anyone makes a choice out of several options that's it. That one choice is it and the rest are not but with me it's a step beyond that. My choice inherently makes all the other choices _wrong_. Even knowing all of that, people still want to do their own thing and make their own picks if they disagree with me and think I'm wrong." He shrugged. "I respect that. I mean, I get the impulse."

Spencer couldn't connect it, "But if they don't do what you choose then they're inherently wrong—"

"But am I supposed to force them? No. And I mean, it runs to small things too, you have to understand. I know who everyone's soul mate is so does that mean dating is suddenly moot? Some people like dating. It's fun. I'm not gonna tell a girl who's going on a date with one guy that it will set back getting married to Mr. Right for five years. Who does that? And even if I say Hey, there's Mr. Right, and they're not ready for each other? Bam, I probably ruined their chances forever. Beyond that are super small things like don't eat that it has dairy but you already know it has dairy but you love it anyway and will deal, right? What's a few Tums to Junior's Cheesecake, right? Then you have major big things like don't get on that flight or detour to a different road, things that change everything, but I can't finagle the major things and let go of the little ones because everything builds. That's just life and no one wants me living it for them. Some people ask, I guide, it's the arrangement. It's not a test, it's just you guys making choices everyday that add up."

"Earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes? Those aren't choices," Dean said.

"And do you know why Cas and the rest of the kids have to rent space inside of you all when they come down here? And why demons can't even touch you outside of a living human body? Cause this planet is yours. Gave it to you with a bow on it and all of that disaster stuff you just mentioned? you'll figure out in like less than twenty years."

Spencer's Chuck looked up to him and said, "I mean, look at this thing. Ten thousand years ago you were still figuring out fire and _clothes_ and now you make _everything_ out of polyester. It's really cool." He started to point to the four sides His image was bound by. "But, a few downsides I decided to upgrade. Glare? Gone. You could walk on the sun with this thing and still read the screen. Instant downloads of pretty much anything you want on it. Permanent charge and you can't break it. Oh, and a USB. Hello? That was ridiculous."

Spencer listened to the list of features and could only blink in reply. Dean rolled his eyes and looked to the computer screen, "But why's he need it?"

"New Keeper of the Campbell library should have mobile access to it."

And Chuck on the iPad screen disappeared to reveal a bookshelf app that housed the entire Campbell library.

"I know it's not exactly Oprah's book club but I suggest you finish up what you started this morning." And on the screen appeared the title page to _'Supernatural: Uncut and Unedited.'_

Dean craned his neck to see what was up on Spencer's screen. When he saw it he moved to jump up but he couldn't move an inch. Suddenly remembering where he was and who exactly had given Spencer that order, Dean relaxed himself and looked to the Chuck on his monitor. He gave Dean a _'Really?'_-look.

"What do you mean _uncut and unedited_?" Was all Dean could ask.

"Well, let's just say that at twenty thousand words per minute it's still gonna take him a while to finish it all."

Dean cringed and closed his eyes. "Everything?"

"Yep."

Spencer looked to the screen and asked, "I'm looking for something?"

"Holes, lapses in logic, impossibilities . . . missing branches. They'll pose more questions than they'll answer and you'll notice." Cas looked to the television screen with a furtive look and the image there only nodded to him. Neither Dean nor Spencer noticed.

"How can there be all of that in our lives?" Dean asked. "And missing branches? What does that even mean?"

"Dean, you should have found it by now but you can't see it and you'll know why soon or you know now but you refuse to acknowledge it."

"You know which."

"I do. You don't. That's the point."

Spencer shrugged. "But why _me_?"

"Answer one question," Chuck said, gesturing to Dean. "And you'll solve the other," He pointed to Spencer.

"You're not gonna give us anymore, are you?" Dean asked.

"Not unless I reabsorb the entire planet," He said, smiling. "No one would notice, everyone goes to Heaven. I wonder what you'll say?"

Spencer and Dean looked to one another and gulped hard. They both shook their heads.

"There's that human independent spirit," He laughed. Looking to Cas He said, "Take care of the kids, Cas."

"Hey," Dean and Spencer protested.

Cas turned to them irritably and said, "You both do realize that compared to me you're infants, right?"

"Well . . . yeah, but—" Dean began. "I'm _socially_ mature."

"Barely." Cas turned to the television screen. "Yes, Father."

"Dean," Chuck looked to him from the monitor. "Tell Sam that he could have come. I'm not disappointed in him." Dean's mouth widened a little at that but he only nodded. "Spencer, tell Derek to take Dean's advice. It'll get better." Spencer nodded. "And boys," He said, individually to each in unison. "I am so proud of you." With a parting smile, He was gone and they found themselves standing in Bobby's study. Sam, Derek and Bobby were standing around them with confusion in their expressions. Their confusion caused Dean, Spencer and Cas to wear their own confusion.

"What?" Dean asked them.

"What do you mean, _what_? You just left a second ago," Sam said.

Spencer looked to his watch which read 12:51 and he glanced to the clock on the mantle which read 12:17. His eyes went wide in confusion and awe. They'd just traveled in time. Dean mimicked Spencer and nodded in understanding.

"He sent us back," he said too casually for Spencer to even understand. Dean grinned, looking to Cas, "If we went back to His place right now would we still be there?"

Cas nodded, "Yes."

"Awesome."

"What just happened?" Spencer asked them both, seeing the looks of comprehension spread to Sam and Bobby. Only he and Derek remained in the dark. "We just time-traveled?"

"Yes," Cas answered.

Dean pointed to the iPad. "Get to reading. Obviously He doesn't want you wasting time."

"You've done that before?"

"I know, crazy right? Three times."

"You've traveled in time three times?" Spencer's mind was completely blown for the nth time in less than twenty-four hours.

"Yep. Went to the past, then the future, then the past again. Now . . . past again? Not by much. This time definitely had the lowest body count."

Spencer and Derek glanced to one another.

"Oh come on! You just met _God_ and you're freaking out about pulling a Marty McFly for a half hour?"

Spencer didn't even know what to say or think. "I guess I can deal with Doc Shurley being God more than I can deal with Doc Shurley being Doc Brown. The universe no longer has _any_ rules whatsoever."

Dean snorted, "Of course it has rules. He made them, He can break them. Simple."

Cas chimed in, "Agreed."

Spencer's mouth hung open.

As the three of them stood there discussing temporal rule-breaking they didn't notice the mutual expressions of amazement that occurred when Dean declared that Spencer had just met God.

"He was there?" Sam asked, looking like he had to concentrate very hard to even speak.

While Cas replied, "Yes," Dean and Spencer replied, "Sort of," and "Technically," respectively.

Derek asked, "How was He _technically _there?"

Spencer held up his . . . Gift from God and said, "Conference call."

* * *

_"My father."_

_"Your father?"_

_Dean smirked, "Yeah, the which art in Heaven one."_

_Spencer was beyond confused._

**FIVE MINUTES LATER**

Spencer walked into the kitchen and slowly sat down in the chair opposite Derek. He needed someone to talk to, someone who was on the same page he was on but he knew, he could clearly see it, that Derek needed someone to talk to as well and for a completely different reason. While Spencer's childhood was slowly unseaming, he saw that Derek's present was already torn to pieces.

"Do I wanna know what she said?" Morgan asked, his forehead bent on the heel of his palm, his eyes trailing the tablecloth.

Spencer had almost forgotten about Meg's phone call. "It was just a lot of histrionic 'I'm so evil' kind of things . . ."

"And?"

". . . and Dean and I have until midnight to surrender or they'll start going after . . . secondary connections."

Derek looked up and narrowed his eyes knowing Reid only went _technical_ when he wasn't comfortable with plain English. "Secondary connections?"

Spencer inhaled and let out, "Families of the team. Whoever doesn't have a guardian on them. Jack, Emily's parents, others."

Derek clenched his fists. "She threatened my mom and my sisters, didn't she?"

"Yeah."

Seething, Derek said, "I will kill her before she can even _think_ of touching them."

An image of Morgan as he was just a few hours ago went through Spencer and he knew that if Meg went near Morgan's family, he would hunt that demon to the ends of the Earth and beyond. Spencer unfortunately noticed and was comforted with the fact that in his anger his friend let go of his vulnerability. He now understood why he always saw his Uncle John as such a strong man.

"You want to talk about it?" Spencer asked, the words just leaving his mouth without much thought.

With an almost imperceptible shake of his head, Derek said, "Later."

He'd expected a flat out 'no' and a few days of space at least before getting to a 'later.' Now Reid wondered just what it was that Dean had said to him.

"And hell if I let her get her hands on you," Derek said to him, just realizing what Spencer had said about he and Dean and midnight.

"We've got two angels on the team. And apparently . . . God," he frowned and then shrugged, still not absorbing all of it.

Derek grinned, "Kinda figured that part _because_ of the two angels, kid."

"Hmm," Spencer hummed, biting at his lip, not sure how to explain. "Right."

"What?"

"There's a pretty high possibility that my old English teacher from high school is God."

Closing his eyes, Derek groaned, "Wake me up when this nightmare is over."

* * *

"Sam—" Dean called out as his brother's face slowly fell, collapsing like a house of cards. Sam backed quickly and quietly out of the room. Darting after him, Dean left an awed Bobby and Cas in the library.

Bobby tried to put it together but putting Chuck's face to his image of God was a tall order. Cas next to him was looking equal parts horrified and elated.

"He was with us the entire time," Cas said, sinking into a chair. "I've been so angry at Him and the entire time . . ." he repeated, trailing off.

"So, wait . . . is 'Chuck' a vessel or something?" Bobby asked.

Cas looked at him like he wasn't speaking a language he was familiar with. "He is _God_. Why would He _need_ a vessel?"

Bobby gave him a dull look and replied, "You do."

"I am not God."

"Point taken," he huffed. "So He's been here all this time, squeezes us past major roadblocks but leaves us flailing over here to figure all this out on our own?"

". . . yes."

"So . . . was all this a test or something?"

Thinking over the last two years and remembering Uriel and Zachariah and the war between his brothers and sisters that they had created out of nothing just to destroy one another Cas shook his head. "With all the challenges we pose to one another He had no cause to test us . . . I think rather He's been helping us win?" He proposed. Bobby considered that over for a few moments, rolling it around in his mind before he nodded in agreement. After all they had been through there was little doubt the only reason any of them was still breathing was because Chuck had been tilting the scales in their favor the whole time.

* * *

"Sam, stop!" Dean called out to him from the middle of a scrap row under the hot midday sun.

Samuel spun on his brother, "This whole time He was right there—"

"Definition of _God_, Sam—"

"It's different, Dean. Between you and me its a million different worlds apart and you can't understand this—"

Dean rolled his eyes and threw his hands up in frustration, "Oh Christ! Don't start that again."

Sam set his jaw, "Are you serious?"

"Three _months_ I've been mourning you and _now_ we find out we've had God in our corner and you're out here boohooing your lot? Are you fucking kidding me? Oh, I won't understand your angst, I won't understand your pain, poor Sam—Get over it! You spent half a hiccup in Hell and now you're out and clear. He left me in there _forty years_ to rot to the bone but _you're_ whining?"

"Face to face He told me to stop and I kept going," Sam said, the words low and the last syllable breaking from his lips. Dean didn't understand him at first before the words sank in. "He sat me down in that motel when I was waiting for Lilith and He looked me in the eye and He told me to stop," Sam said, his words clipped and methodical. "And I didn't listen," he whispered.

"You didn't know—" Dean said, wanting, needing to find the words that would make this right.

Sam looked like he was about to fall apart nerve by nerve, his face slowly twisting in agony. "I could have stopped it then. That's what He was telling me. I didn't listen. So, okay, you had forty years, I get that Dean and I'm sorry but you've got a future. You've got a family and a home and everything I always wanted and I've got eternity knowing I did this to myself. So yeah, I think feeling like shit right now is a pretty human thing to do unless you want to remind me what I'm not anymore."

Dean rounded on him and held his hand on his chest, stopping Sam from walking even further away. Sam vanished.

"Damn it." Dean looked all around the open space, over twisted and rolled steel and broken glass. "Sam!" There was no answer. "Okay. So what?" You fucked up, so what? You were allowed to make mistakes, you're . . . you _were_ human. We _do_ that. And hell, compare that to half—scratch that—_all_ of the angels we've met _not_ named Castiel. They've all been massive douches who made worse choices on their best days than you did in the ass-end of a bender so deal with it! You . . . you think He's disappointed in you but He's not. No way He could be."

"How do you know that?" Sam asked, appearing seated on the hood of an old blue car. His voice held a hint of tears. Dean jumped at his sudden reappearance. He barely got used to Cas doing it and now there would be two of them. Great.

"'Cause if He can't forgive you for the shit you did trying to save the world his kids went out of their way to destroy then what the hell is the point of even having a God?"

"You don't mean that—"

"I do. I'd rather worship the worm in a bottle of _really_ bad tequila. At least I know when to expect it to fuck me over. From everything I've seen of Chuck, from everything He's done for us behind the scenes, knowing now it was all bullshit about Him staying hands off on everything? I do not think He's coming up with ways to punish you for saving the world."

Sam just helplessly shrugged, "Look at me Dean—"

"Yeah, look at you. You could be in Hell roasting on a spit right now. Instead you're up here, super charged and wearing your own skin. If He's gonna be mad at anything it's gonna be you complaining about _this_ given the alternative."

A sudden realization passed over him and Sam clamped his mouth and the muscles in his jaw jumped. Dean was right. Of his options, not living as a human was his own choice and he had made that choice loud and clear in Detroit, handing his body over to Lucifer in a bargain. He had no more choices and no one had twisted his arm. He chose life outside of humanity and he chose life in Hell. Chuck hadn't punished him for his choices—he saved him from one and redeemed him from the other when Cas pressed Lucifer from his mind. God saved him in both situations.

"When we see Him—" Dean began but Sam cut him off.

"What?"

"We have to go to His place, that's pretty clear."

Pure fear drained the color from him. "There's no way I can—"

"You've got to—"

"Not yet. I can't—"

"You act like we'll have so many chances here."

"I know but . . . I can't. Everything you said makes sense up here," he gestured to his head. "But then I see everything all over again. You go—"

"I can't do this without you, Sam—"

"Of course you can. Dean, your whole life . . . you've been the only one who's never let Him down."

Dean snorted, "Yeah, right. Okay."

"I mean it. This is _Chuck_ we're talking about so minus the women and the booze from your sin-count and what do you have left?"

Dean smirked, "A fucking alter boy?"

"Exactly."

Dean's face blanked. "That was sarcasm."

"I mean it."

"And here you are the angel."

"Only because deep down somewhere in here Satan's keeping warm. That was my choice and it was the wrong one and He didn't want this for me. How exactly do you expect me to face Him?"

Dean wanted to say something in reply but he couldn't.

"I'll see you when you leave. I just need a few minutes alone. Okay?" He asked and Dean just nodded. Sam disappeared again.

* * *

That's where it ended. The chapter wasn't even finished but the words just stopped. It was just after three in the afternoon and he'd just read a precise play by play of the lives of Sam and Dean Winchester with the side stories detailing his own life, Bobby's and Derek's. It truly was completely unedited and the Winchester Gospels had ended a book ago with Sam's fall into Hell and the new story, The Book of Campbell, had begun with Dean on a doorstep, Sam being accepted into Heaven and Spencer having computer trouble. It was literally all there up to the part where they'd left for Doc's house looking for answers.

Derek and Bobby were passing the reading time in training out back while Sam and Cas continued their special brand of training. His mom was still resting upstairs. Dean had stayed with him, resting his eyes as he lay in a small couch off to the side of the room as every once in a while Spencer would break from the reading with a question born of shock.

_"How many times have you come back from the dead?"_

_". . . you slept with an angel?"_

_"Sam slept with a demon?"_

_"Um . . . demon blood?"_

_"A brother?"_

Dean would always sleepily reply, "Keep reading," his voice one hundred percent _groan_. He'd been used to bedtimes south of midnight and the recovery time after he got shot was hardly restful. He knew that huge file of unauthorized biography would answer all of the kid's questions so he deflected them knowing Spencer read fast enough to answer them soon enough on his own.

Now he watched though sleep-weary eyes as Spencer clicked the screen off and sat back in the chair he was on as he wore a deep look of contemplation.

"Done?" Dean asked, rolling up.

"Yes," Spencer said with some hesitation. His eyes turned to Dean and they were filled with a strange curiosity.

Frowning and a little uncomfortable, Dean asked, "What?"

"You already know the first part. You were never supposed to be Michael's vessel."

Dean blinked and then gave a concessionary shrug. "I guessed. With the whole 'there can be only one' two-year long spiel followed by 'whoops, never mind.'"

"No, that's not what I mean. There was never a _whoops_. They knew from the start." Spencer took a breath before saying, "All of them."

"Wait . . . Spencer, you're talking Cas, aren't you?"

"Dean, Heaven's been lying to you from the beginning."

"Lying about what?"

"About what you really are."

* * *

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	13. Blood Memory

**Chapter Thirteen**

**Blood memory**

"Their easiest way of keeping the truth from you was by telling you that the Bible readily available to everyone has errors not only of translation but also of basic process and direction but they lied to you, Dean. It's exactly what you said in my kitchen—there are only so many players in an Apocalypse and we know all of them."

"Yeah, and I'm not Michael. The Bible only lists two other good guys when it all goes down: God and Jesus."

"And you're neither."

Dean snorted, "Obviously." Then the unsaid implication came to him and he frowned. "Wait, are you saying I'm on the other side—"

"No, no, not at all. What I'm saying is that you were also right when you said that the King James Version misses certain things. Point of fact: translation and interpretation. Dean, Cas _tells_ you that the man who starts it has to end it. Alistair tells you that a 'righteous' man has to be the one to break the first seal. This is all true but because of interpretation what should have been obvious, _because_ the angels and Heaven filled your head with Michael and being his vessel you were never allowed to take a breath and ask, 'what is the truth?' but you didn't fall for it which, I really have to say, Dean, resisting them you really did save the world."

"Kid, spit it out."

Spencer went to a shelf and selected one of the many Bibles there. Flipping through to the end he held it out to Dean who took it with an uncomfortable rumbling fluttering through his gut. "Revelation, chapter five."

Dean read it aloud, "Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, _'Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?'_ But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, _'Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.' _Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb—" Dean slammed the book shut before reaching the end.

Spencer took the book from him and felt Dean's fingers shaking. "It was right there the whole time," he said quietly.

"Dude," Dean began, his voice rough and low. He avoided Spencer's eyes. "The Lamb of God is _Jesus_—"

"If you read it carefully you'll see there's a second creature being conflated with the original. Look at the wording—'then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain.' That flies in the face of the entire Christian tradition if it's to be held as a fact that Christ overcame death. Why would he, at the end of it all, _look slain_? Contrast that with a man who was . . . _endlessly_ tortured in Hell for thirty years . . ."

Dean's jaw muscles tightened and he nodded. "Yeah," he said stiffly. "I guess I wasn't gonna win any beauty pageants back then."

Hearing Dean speak about the time, the decades he'd spent down there, times Spencer had just read about in gruesome detail, unnerved him but he had to get all of it out. "They tried to find someone worthy enough to break the seals: _'Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?'_ and that's exactly what Alistair paraphrased when he said, _'And it is written, that the first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood in Hell. As he breaks, so shall it break.'_" Spencer stopped speaking when he saw Dean cringe at Alistair's words. "I'm sorry."

"It's really all in there, huh?" Dean silently mused.

"Dean, only you can put this all back together."

With a clipped motion, he nodded, "That's why they want me."

"It has nothing to do with revenge. As long as you're alive, you can finish this."

"But I'm not _doing_ anything. I haven't _been_ doing anything. So I started it, so I'm . . . _whatever_, point is, I don't exactly know what the fuck to do and my great big accomplishment is being the guy who broke in Hell." He stared into Spencer's eyes and said, "I don't have it in me to fix this."

"It's so much more than you think—"

"How does it get bigger than _that_?"

"There are situations here; clues that you, drawn into the cyclone of events, never had a chance to consider but they mean something."

"What clues?"

"Um, okay. Um . . . the, uh, _Whore_ of Babylon," Spencer blushed. "Only a servant of Heaven could kill her. You've never said it or felt it but you're the only one who—"

"I did what I had to do—"

"Dean, you killed Zachariah!" Spencer exclaimed needing him to just get it, to just understand what he was telling him.

He tried to counter Spencer's words but those parameters had been made very clear: only an angel could kill another angel. He frowned and couldn't think of anything that would make that make sense.

Spencer continued, "You only questioned it for a second but Dean, all of this combined means that yes, somewhere inside you do _'have it in you to fix this.'_ They tried to convince you that the _only_ way you could have defeated Lucifer was with Michael inside of you but you _didn't_ need Michael. At all."

"What are you talking about? The only thing I did that day was have my ass handed to me." Spencer fidgeted with his fingers a little and Dean gave him a 'you gotta be shitting me'-look. "There's more?"

Bending his hands and fingers as if he were about to play a concerto, Spencer glanced to the floor and quirked a small smile as his mind painted the entire scene before him. "There's a telling three-situation foreshadowing. It's sometimes referred to as the _magic three_ and it's a form of _repetitive designation_. It's a type of literary device used that repeats an action dispersed throughout a text so as to hide it from the reader so when a surprise or a twist occurs at the end or climax it will seem, with hindsight, not to have come completely out of left-field."

"Wait, you read that in _my_ life? How the hell wouldn't I notice it?"

"To you it was spread across a distance of years but to me it was only a few hours. I saw the connection immediately and it's so specific that it _has_ to mean something."

"What is it?"

"Okay. Um, when . . . when Azazel was possessing Uncle John—"

Dean's voice darkened, "Really?"

"I'm sorry. It's not going to be an easy set of comparisons but you have to hear me out . . . eye to eye and face to face with you Uncle John managed to break through the possession and he regained control of himself. If this kind of thing only happened once then you could credit your dad's fortitude but then the same situation happens again with you and Bobby. Again he breaks out of the hold. Twice becomes a curious chain but not a pattern. Not yet. It's only when it happens a third time that you can't just rely on the individual strengths of the people being possessed and you have to look at the thing they all have in common in those situations. The third time it happens is when Sam breaks free of Lucifer. The common thread in all three was you and the overwhelming impulse that stopped them from killing you."

Dean couldn't respond to that. He couldn't rationalize it away.

"Doc told me to look for holes and lapses in logic and impossibilities and they all converge on you."

"Cas knew?" The doubt and uncertainty was supplanted with anger.

Spencer blanched. "Not at first. That's why he tried to speak to you when he pulled you from Hell. Whatever his superiors told him, he did honestly think you were a vessel when he pulled you out. Vessels can understand when an angel speaks to them just like Cas' vessel, Jimmy, understood him and Lucifer's temporary vessel, Nick, understood him." Dean frowned and Spencer understood that only he was privy to the Lucifer side of the story he'd just read. "Both Cas and Lucifer were disembodied at the time but the vessels heard them clearly. When Cas tried to talk to you—"

"My eardrums still ring," Dean huffed.

"Exactly. I think that's when Cas realized something was wrong. Doubt began. He started to question things and he did eventually find out that you weren't Michael's vessel. He discovered that you didn't need Michael. He was going to tell you the whole truth but that's when Heaven brought him back up for reprogramming—"

"_This_, all of _this_ is what he wanted to tell me?"

"Yes."

"And they stopped him." Dean paced back and forth. "But why? That's what I don't get. If I could end it on my own, why try to get Michael to wear me?"

A sigh caused them both to spin around to see Cas seated at the desk. Sam was by the window looking as pale as his impervious body would allow. Dean had no idea how long they'd been there but by Sam's expression, he'd heard it all. Cas spoke, "Because whoever defeated Lucifer inherited the Earth."

"Bull_shit_," Dean said.

"The _race_, Dean, not the person himself," Cas corrected. Dean almost shuddered at the idea of being _King of Earth_ or some other such batshittery. "Whoever held dominion over Earth held dominion over Heaven. That's why angels are in service to humans. So it is written. That's why they stopped me from telling you. That's why they wanted Michael inside of you."

Spencer looked to Dean and said, "That's why Doc's been helping us."

"The war wasn't between Michael and Lucifer as brothers, it's always been between humans and angels as brothers."

That statement fell into the room like a solid piece of lead. The entire conflict had been as Dean always said it was—a battle for the human soul of Earth.

Sam's voice was empty and an overwhelming sense of shock painted his features. "Heaven's been against us the whole time?"

Castiel looked away from him, sharply staring ahead, unable to answer him to his face. "The first lamb was a sacrifice to redeem man from Hell and the need of Hell. The second was supposed to redeem man from Heaven and the need of Heaven. Revelation paints Earth as the final and ultimate paradise."

"_That's_ the fucking 'paradise' Raphael and Zachariah and all those assholes have been talking about? _Earth_?" Dean demanded.

"Those above me, the Elders," Castiel replied. "They started this, using the demons and Lucifer as a means to an end. They initiated all of this to take away the human birthright. With Michael inside of you they would have accomplished this."

"But I kept refusing," Dean said, shaking his head in complete disbelief.

Cas gave him a small, nearly imperceptible grin, "Your stubbornness was unaccounted for and it all grew beyond their control. They panicked. That's when they decided to bring Adam back."

"He was Michael's _actual_ vessel," Dean said, understanding.

"Michael's fight with Lucifer is only a battle within the war but just like the seals, everything has to fall in an order. If you defeated Lucifer then it would all be over before it began. This is why they sent in Michael—"

Dean wiped his face with his hands, "_Only_ a battle? What the fuck, Cas! You made it sound like the whole book of Revelation was a massive rewrite but you're telling me that it's actually closer to the original?"

"I am sorry—"

"Don't be sorry, I don't need you _sorry_. I need you telling me the truth! You could have said _something_; you could have told me what the hell was going on. You _reamed_ my ass when I told you I was going to say yes to Michael. You know what would have worked better than beating me to a bloody pulp? The goddamn truth!"

"I tried—"

Dean opened his mouth then closed it. He remembered the state of affairs when he and Sam found Jimmy Novak in the middle of what looked like a war zone. Biting his lip, Dean nodded, now knowing there had been a time when Cas wanted to tell him everything and was stopped as forcefully as he could have been stopped.

"Right."

"No matter what," Sam began, his gaze unfocused, his words soft. "I was supposed to be Lucifer's vessel?"

"You didn't let him win," Dean said to his brother.

Sam turned to him, his eyes wide and his gaze lost. "I almost did," he said softly. "Dean, do you know how I got control of my body again?"

"You've always been strong—"

"Dean, like Dad and like Bobby, all that went through my head was you. One minute I didn't have any control and the next I was digging my nails into the skin of my hands just to stop from hitting you again." He gulped and looked away. "I don't think _strong_ had anything to do with it."

"Sam—"

"I . . ." Castiel stood from behind the desk and squared his shoulders. "I have something to say. Once I say this, you may think otherwise than what you think of me now but I must say it." He glanced away to nothing in particular as he confessed, "It was me who let Sam out of the panic room." Both Dean and Sam stared at him with sheer incomprehension painting their faces.

"Cas?" Sam said to him, unsure he'd heard right.

Dean looked beyond all emotion of betrayal. He only asked, "How far did the company line go, Cas?"

Castiel looked only to Sam, his apprentice, and had to have him understand. "You were forced this role, the same way Dean was almost led to accept Michael. It is why they had you drinking the demon blood, why Azazel fed it to you as an infant and why Heaven pushed you towards Lucifer. This was not your fate, Sam. You weren't meant to be his vessel. That aspect of your destiny had to be manufactured."

"By Heaven and Hell," Spencer said, almost to himself. He had wondered the motivations that had spurred Cas when he read that part of the story. Now he knew.

Sam, in the three months he'd held onto Castiel as a mentor, in the three months he'd only had one other person to really talk to, did something he never imagined he could ever do. Moving in the blink of an eye, Sam reared back and punched Cas square in the jaw. He may not have been all angel but there was power enough behind the blow to spin the angel's head to the side. Most of the pain was localized in Sam's fist but so was a mountain of satisfaction.

"Ouch," Cas groaned.

Spencer watched the exchange with his mouth ajar. Dean mirrored his expression.

There was so much Sam wanted to do, so much anger he just wanted to unleash on Cas but every time he thought of something to attack him with, his own choices and bad decisions sapped the salient points from his arguments. Cas and Ruby and Heaven and Hell all pointed him in the wrong direction but, like Dean, the ultimate choice had always been his. Unlike Dean, he hadn't been strong enough to fight their pressure.

"I understand if you can not forgive me," Cas said, touching his jaw line.

"I want to—" Sam began, sounding as if the words that were supposed to follow would be _kill you_ but he bit down on his lips and looked away. Instead he only said, "I _trusted_ you." Folding his arms across his chest, Sam thought back to the last year that had passed between then and now and everything they had been through since Lucifer rose from his prison, everything Cas had done to help and protect them. He finally said with a stiff nod, "I trust you."

Cas looked to Dean who reluctantly nodded, "Yeah, me too. But don't figure I wouldn't kick your ass right now if I could."

As glad and as grateful as Spencer was that the relationship between the three wouldn't degenerate he was also dumbfounded by the immediacy of forgiveness.

Dean, seeing the question in his face asked, "What?" Sam and Cas looked to Spencer. "We forgive a lot of shit in this family."

Rotating his chin, Cas said, "Of course, not without physical confrontation."

Sam shrugged, "You'll get used to it."

"Is that supposed to be encouragement?" Spencer asked with a playful smile but soon that smile disappeared. He looked down, avoiding everyone's eyes.

"Spencer?" Dean called to him.

"I've read all of it and I still don't know what my role is in all of this. If I even have one," he said, fidgeting with his watch. He glanced up and looked to Cas. "Where do I fit?"

Cas nodded and said, "What was written of the destinies of you and Sam has been lost. The Elders are the only ones now living who could say but they do not wish you to succeed. I'm sorry."

"We've never been much for destiny around here anyway," Dean said to Spencer and glancing to Sam, hoping his words helped, even a little.

"As it stands now," Cas said to them all. "If Dean fails to end Armageddon then Lucifer will rise."

Sam shook his head, "You mean if Dean doesn't stop me . . . kill me."

"No. Sam, you remain and will remain in full control of your body. The only way Lucifer can overtake you is if you let him."

With a sure determination, Sam said, "I never will."

"And the demons know this. They also know what would happen if they got their hands on Dean. They know that without him you're—"

"Yeah," Sam said, cutting him off. There was no one in that room who didn't know how far Sam had fallen when Dean died and went to Hell. It was true. If it happened again, especially now with his own memories of what that place was like . . . "I know."

"So . . . if they manage to drag me back to Hell . . ." Dean began but the thought triggered his gag reflex. "They get me, Sam goes evil Super Saiyan and Spencer . . ."

"Would potentially be the last hope for humanity."

Spencer's stomach made a squirrelly squeak. Actually, no one was sure if it was his stomach that squeaked or if it was just him. He suddenly wanted _out_ of this family.

"So that's why they want us both," he said, sinking to a chair.

"It's why they _need _you both. If the Elders are manipulating the demons to their own ends then they've been told it's necessary to have you. That's why you're so sought after. Whether they have the details or not, which I doubt, they are working towards a common goal and that involves capturing you and Dean."

"All of this cosmic tug of war just to get the thing inside of me to show his face," Sam ground out. "Great."

"The Elders know they can destroy Lucifer. They are not afraid of him in any sense. The conflict of the last year was to stop Dean from destroying him."

"Is that what it comes down to, then?" Dean asked, looking to Sam. "I have to kill Lucifer to end this?" Sam and his brother looked to one another and a world of understanding passed through them. They were used to overcoming impossible situations and they'd figure this out no matter what.

"Yes, but Lucifer is too strong for you to simply kill within a vessel. Unlike the other archangels, he and Michael cannot be killed within vessels. That is why the Colt didn't work on him. That is why their fight, as deadly as it would have been for their vessels, is only a battle within the larger war in Revelation. In the end, Lucifer isn't destroyed by Michael."

"Shit," Dean said, recalling the story. He knew the book in three languages and Revelation 20:10 flashed in his mind in Greek, Latin _and_ English. "I have to find a fucking lake of fire?"

Cas shrugged.

Dean threw his hands up. "So, not only do I have to essentially exorcise _Satan_ from my baby brother, who, might I add, is an _angel_ now so that by itself might be _completely_ _impossible_, I also have to find a lake of fire to throw the now shapeless Satan into?"

With a hum Cas said, "I believe it will not be a simple task, no."

The four of them became very quiet as the task settled over them. Even if they managed to do all of that before midnight, which, huh, wasn't gonna happen, they still had to deal with a horde of demons out for their skin. Great. Never mind royally pissing off the 'Elders' Cas kept mentioning.

Dean reached over and took a bottle of six day old rotgut from Bobby's desk. He pulled out four dusty glasses from one of the shelves and poured three fingers into two of them and stacked it to the brim for the others. He passed the two heavy ones to Sam and Cas and took the others for him and Spencer. He held up his glass in a toast as he checked the clock.

"Mazel tov boys. We've got less than eight hours to save the world or watch everyone we care about suffer and die." He knocked his drink back. It burned a satisfying hole all the way down his esophagus.

Sam gave a resigned grin before doing the same. Spencer pondered over the glass before putting it to his head. He thought he was going to die. Cas downed his drink and then reached out for the remainder of what was in the bottle.

"The hell you doing?" Bobby demanded from the doorway with Derek right behind him. He snatched the near-empty bottle from Cas.

Derek looked between the four of them, especially at the drowning-rat expression on Reid's gasping face. "What just happened?"

Dean pointed to him and said, "Better question: What _didn't_ just happen?"

* * *

Diana Reid didn't at first recognize where she had woken up. The long night had appeared in her memory as only a dream before she took in the familiar space of Bobby's house. She felt as rested as the situation would allow and so she rolled out of the narrow bed and went to the small bathroom down the hall. In the tiled space and being just to the mouth of the stairs she heard her son and her nephew speaking from the library. Most of what they were saying sailed over her understanding but bits started to fit pieces and a full story was shaping in her mind. Decades spent wondering what had been the motivations for the Yellow-Eyed Demon to take her sister fell into place.

The story was far more involved than she had suspected from Sam's telling silence. Words like Apocalypse and Armageddon weren't bandied around for shock value, not in their world. These were literal uses and listening to it all, culminating with her son's unsure destiny in all of it made her sick. Of course she knew Spencer could face any challenge and triumph but this was so different and so unlike anything she'd ever encountered. It was well beyond anything she had ever imagined. She did not want the weight of the world on his shoulders. It wasn't fair to ask that of him or of anyone else, especially her nephews who had lived through so much already. This was her family. They were all she had left. But her impulse to deny was countered by that new impulse gained over years of deliberate, rigid and methodical living—the impulse of completion. The impulse of getting the job done, doing as asked so the asker could stop messing around in your affairs. It was both a sensation of liberation and one of submission. She had fought for so long and all she had to show for it was a son who, yes, loved her dearly, but who also felt immeasurable guilt every time he saw her, blaming himself for a circumstance that was all her own.

"Mom?" Spencer said and Diana realized that she had made her way down the stairs. She felt lost and alone and oppressed. The feeling was familiar to her and she knew she was entering that dark road.

"Castiel," she called out weakly for help. She felt two fingers on her forehead and the cobwebs cleared, the dark path brightened and fell away. She was standing in the library and she had six pairs of eyes on her.

She sighed, crossing her hands across her chest. "Really? I'm a certified paranoid schizophrenic. You can't possibly be all that shocked."

Dean knew there was a reason he'd always liked her, the now obvious resemblance to his mom notwithstanding. "How you feeling?" He asked her.

"Like I could use some coffee and some answers," she said, glancing between him and Spencer.

"Quick version?" Sam asked.

"I heard you were on a time restriction," she said, sitting.

"How _much_ did you hear?" Spencer asked.

"Everything. Understood _much_ less."

"Well, apparently, demons want me and Dean in Hell so they can get to Sam and to Lucifer who is sealed inside of Sam. Angels want to bring about the end of the world but only on their terms and remember Doc Shurley, my old English teacher from high school? He's God."

Diana blinked. Her mouth opened and then it closed. Pursing her lips she said, "Yes, that coffee would be great right about now."

"Mom?"

"Strike the quick version, I need the _explain everything to me right now_ version."

Slowing down the telling of the story but only hitting the major points, Spencer explained to his mom and to Derek, who was digesting all of this information for the first time as well, what the years had woven for himself and his cousins. His words detangled the confusion that had settled over her when she'd been eavesdropping. She had known that Azazel had marked her family ten years before Sam had been born but she hadn't heard the rest of it since entering the sanitarium.

"The three of you have something going on beyond Lucifer and demons?" She looked to Dean and was struck by how much he'd grown into an image of his mom. She hadn't seen him in so long and now that she was finally looking at him she could see Mimi in so much in him. "Lamb of God?"

"Fancy title for 'Guy He chucked in a hole for forty years so Hell could work him over but good.'"

She reached out and touched his shoulder with a smile, "Well, _Lamb of God_ probably looks better on letterhead." Dean snorted and for the first time in a while he genuinely laughed. Yeah, he definitely liked her.

"What I don't understand," Sam began. "If being Lucifer's vessel was never my destiny, of all the kids Yellow-Eyes went to who's to say I'd be left standing at the end? That can't possibly be luck. Or, bad luck," he corrected.

"You weren't," Dean said, what happened to Sam still affecting him all those years later.

Spencer looked to Derek. "It was a kind of a cage fight with a town serving as the cage," he explained, clarifying a part of the story he'd glazed over.

"Sam was fighting those other kids?" Derek asked. "You said they were being _evaluated_."

Spencer shrugged. "A euphemism for death match."

"I lost," Sam said.

Derek didn't at first understand as he clawed through all of Reid's _euphemisms_ but he soon got it. "You died," he said.

A sudden understanding washed over Sam and he grit his teeth as rage boiled inside of him. "I was supposed to die, wasn't I? So they could get Dean to sell his soul."

Dean nodded having already come to that conclusion. "They had to make sure I'd be down there to break the seal."

"And with that they made sure I'd still be alive at the end to be the only survivor."

Spencer traced the timeline and asked, "All of this happened in '07?"

"Yeah," Dean answered. "Why?"

Spencer tried not to imagine too many unnecessary connections but just a few hours ago he was wondering why demons would use Tobias' name in their interactions with him and now, placing the time he met Tobias against the time all of this was happening with Sam and Dean he realized it was all running concurrently. Hadn't it been Charles Hankel who taught his son to hunt? How to ward off demons? How to live a life so isolated it didn't look much different than how Sam and Dean were raised? Granted, Charles Hankel became psychotic when his wife left him for another man. John Winchester became a hunter when his wife was summarily executed by a demon. One of those situations should have been rationally handled by a stable mind and the other should have sent a man over the edge of sanity. Unfortunately for Tobias, his father wasn't made of the same stuff John was made from. Tobias ended up an insane killer, Sam ended up an angel and Dean . . . hell, Dean was _Biblical_. Spencer had the uneasy feeling that his time with Tobias Hankel may have been more than his own bad luck, more than his being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Spencer felt now that maybe Tobias wasn't as insane as he had seemed . . . perhaps there had been something else inside of him and its name _wasn't_ Raphael.

"Reid?" Derek called out to him.

What if it was fate pulling strings again? Or just Heaven and Hell manipulating the situation? What if Tobias Hankel wasn't _all_ Tobias Hankel split by grief but by something else? If this entire situation moved with all three of them being affected hand-in-hand then it made sense that around the time Sam died and Dean sold his soul that something should have been active in his life as well and thinking back on it, something was.

"Kid?" Derek called to him again, a hand on his shoulder.

Spencer blinked out of his thoughts. "Sorry."

"Something was burning a hole in that brain of yours. What was it?"

Spencer looked to him and said, "End of winter, 2007."

There was only one event during that time that jumped out with unmistakable clarity to him. "Hankel?"

Diana immediately extended her hand to her son and held fast to his arm. Bobby slowly nodded. Dean glanced to Sam who only shrugged.

Spencer said to them, "Tobias Hankel was an unsub with dissociative identity disorder."

"Split personalities?" Dean asked. Bobby and Sam looked at him curiously and he grumbled, "Seriously? Is it so shocking that I watch TV?"

Continuing, Spencer said, "One of his personalities was his father and the other was the archangel Raphael." That immediately set Cas, Sam and Dean on alert. "His father had been obsessed with religion and demonology and hunting. He burned a cross into Tobias' forehead when he was still a child."

"Isn't that lovely," Dean grumbled.

"They lived out on a rural patch of farmland in Georgia. Charles, Tobias' father, eventually became sick and asked Tobias to kill him to end his suffering."

Sam looked to Dean before saying to Spencer, "How did he get over the contradiction? Tobias I mean. To have your dad tell you you'd have to kill—"

Dean immediately caught Sam's implication and he couldn't help shooting his brother the stink eye.

Spencer, who wasn't lost on Sam's reference, just looked at him and said, "He didn't. He killed his father and then he went insane."

Sam bit his lip and slowly nodded before looking away.

"In his mind he kept his father alive, adopting his personality and as a buffer between the two he manifested the personality of Raphael. That was the personality that was driven to kill. His target was people he called sinners."

Castiel crossed his arms and seemed deep in thought. His sudden pensiveness brought the group around to him. Knowing he was being watched and knowing he was expected to speak he simply nodded towards Spencer and said, "He had no intention of killing you."

Spencer looked overwhelmed for just a moment before saying, "I'm right, aren't I? The timeline and the subject are too familiar to be a simple coincidence."

"What's going on?" Dean asked.

Derek looked to Dean and Sam and said, "Hankel kidnapped Reid. He tortured him."

"What?" Dean snapped. He turned to Bobby. "You knew about this?"

Bobby retorted, "You gave me pretty clear instructions to keep you out of the kid's life—"

"I didn't mean—"

Derek held up his hand and looked to Cas, "Wait, but Hankel came pretty damn close to killing him. I watched the whole thing. Reid stopped breathing."

"And yet he is still here," Cas said very calmly.

"He gave me CPR," Spencer said to Dean and Sam, his voice sheepish.

Cas addressed Spencer, "Certain demons have specific assignments and you're right, the timeline cannot be denied. If you died before coming into your destiny it is possible that another would be chosen to replace you and the search for him would take time. It seems they had to be careful not to kill you."

"So, it just wanted to scare me?"

"The assignment would be more involved than that. Whatever of you they couldn't physically harm, they would go after you mentally or spiritually. Perhaps both. Something that would leave you unable to carry through your task."

Diana stole a quick glance to Bobby and Derek watched them and Reid's face as it fell. It made sense, didn't it? Someone as violent as Hankel, confronted with Reid in the corn field doesn't shoot him but _takes_ him. He _tortures_ him, fills his mind with doubt about what kind of person he is. The track marks weren't lost on the EMTs and the doctors who looked over Reid after his captivity in Tobias' graveyard shack. They all knew he'd pushed Dilaudid on him. Reid was expected to fall apart and anyone else would have but he didn't. All on his own he got through the doubt and the addiction.

Damn.

They'd been gunning for the kid that entire time.

Tobias. Spencer wondered if any part of the man he'd met was Tobias Hankel. Had he even met a man? Had it all been a set up formulated to break him hiding under the guise of a case, of a child broken by his father's psychosis? How much of Tobias Hankel had actually been a reflection of himself and how much of that reflection had been purposefully formulated. He'd recovered as much as he could have after that ordeal but he'd never quite felt himself again. He'd lost a part of himself in the exchange and now he knew that had been the plan all along. How often in just the last few hours had he doubted his role in all of this? Asked if a huge mistake had occurred? How much of that doubt had been tied to Georgia and what happened in those nights and days in the cemetery? Tobias and Charles, both personalities lived and breathed the Bible for decades but neither personality has acknowledged when Spencer purposefully misquoted it. He had assured himself he'd been smart even though all evidence existed to the contrary. The Charles side of the personality would have and should have known. The Raphael side should have known. Mission-based killers always knew their missions to an irrational extent. Either should have called him on his misquotation but neither did. They knew and let it slide. Why? And forcing him to dig his own grave? Hadn't Spencer reflected later that this was so outside of Tobias' signature as to be a warning of something? Was the demon's mission over by then and it was just biding time to complete the narrative?

Was any of it real or was that shack in the middle of a graveyard just a construct built to tear his soul apart?

Dean and Sam glanced to one another and could tell by the immediate silence of the group that something _had_ happened to Spencer.

"What was it?" Sam asked all of them in general.

"It's not important now," Spencer said, his voice relating that at some point it had been important, very much so in fact, but he was dealing with the consequences of the revelation at the same moment they wanted answers.

"Spencer—" Dean began but Spencer only replied,

"Later. I promise. I just want to deal with what's in front of us now." For all the questions Spencer had held back in the last day he now saw Dean and Sam log their own questions to ask later.

"Just tell us if you're okay," Dean said.

"You mean if I'm in any shape to fulfill my cosmic destiny?" Spencer asked him with an ironical grin. "I'll be fine."

That was such an echo of Dean's own 'I got this' that he had to smile.

"My God," Diana said as the tapestry finally formed in completion in her mind's eye. "All of this, to the last detail, was planned."

"Everything fits together now but there was something else Doc said to look for that I'm having trouble with."

"What?" His mom asked.

"Missing branches," he said, pondering over the phrasing. "The implication is clear, he meant the branches as they related to the story and the story, being biographical would suggest that the branches meant—"

"Family tree," Diana replied.

"Yes, but how do you find missing branches of a family tree?"

Diana looked to Bobby. He nodded before moving over to a shelf. "You should probably," he began, reaching out to grasp onto a large, flat book. Diana cleared off the surface of his desk to make space and Bobby laid the book open for them all to see. "Start with your family tree."

Over the span of two enormous, yellowing pages, the family genealogy of the present Campbell/le Blanc clan went back generations. There were many names, dozens of branches and small captions next to the branches detailing just how many hunting clans fed into the mainline and just how many continents the family was derived from.

"Holy shit," Dean said, looking over the document. "We have cousins in China?"

"Dragon slayers," Diana said with a nod. "A great aunt on my mother's side did some medical training over there."

"Witch stuff?" Sam asked.

With a blush, Diana nodded.

Dean gaped, "_Witch_ _stuff_ or which stuff like _what_ stuff?"

Bobby huffed, recalling his multiple experiences with Marie Heloise's spell book, "The le Blanc family line, your maternal line, vampire slayers and witches, the whole lot of them." Spencer nodded. "Hell, you had Campbell cousins killing vampires on the Mayflower."

"Am I the only one who didn't know this?" Dean asked, looking around.

"Me raising my hand won't really help, will it?" Derek asked with an astonished grin.

Dean pointed to Spencer's iPad, "I'm gonna have to check that thing out."

"Boy, hush," Bobby said.

Diana continued, "She sent over her research with a note that she was staying."

"There was a guy, wasn't there?" Dean guessed.

Diana shrugged, "There's always a guy."

Spencer studied the family tree, reading it as a kind of road map as he sought out clues and patterns but there was nothing there he could identify as special or noteworthy. The whole perusal lasted less than a minute but everyone could see by the way his brow knotted and the way he bent over with his jaw in his palm that his mind was processing information at a speed no one could begin to comprehend.

"I think I'm operating under a false premise," he finally said, straightening up, adjusting his glasses. "You can't actually identify missing branches from a family tree because that's the point of the tree, to provide a historical record with no holes and questions in it."

"The way he said it means something," Dean said, studying the tree.

"The way he said it means everything," Spencer corrected, moving his long fingers across the aged paper.

Sam watched as they passed over the document and to the multitude of names written there. For a moment he considered what it would have been like to have grown up knowing all of this family. The Winchester boys had only grown up with their father and each other as pieces of their blood relation and now they knew they not only had Spencer and Aunt Diana, they also had family all across the world. He wondered just how crazed and hectic and wonderful a family reunion would have been combining the Campbell men, the le Blanc women and how many others there were in their bloodline. He'd probably be overwhelmed by the sheer number—

"Wait—" Sam began, leaning over the book and spying the next to last generation on the map. Mary and Diana sat there above the names of their boys and a thought, a memory, rattled through him. "What if he didn't mean missing branches from the written record but—" he looked to Castiel, "from the blood record?"

"What?" Dean asked.

"Of course!" Spencer exclaimed.

"Hello?" Dean chimed in over Spencer. "We're not gonna keep playing the game of only Spencer knowing what the hell you're talking about."

Sam ignored him, his eyes still on Cas, "What would it mean if a soul didn't leave an imprint?"

"It would mean that the soul never actually moved on," Cas hesitatingly said. "That scenario is highly unlikely."

Dean waved his hands, "Hello?"

"But ghosts aren't uncommon—" Sam began.

"No, even a ghost leaves an imprint. I mean there was no spirit to actually leave an imprint."

"Like they didn't die? Immortality?"

"Immortality is a possibility but it would have to be the kind of immortality involved in something like an assumption. A supernatural version of immortality, like vampirism, still involves a death. Only a handful of people over the course of all humanity have been assumed and I can tell you they are not on this list."

"Is there another way a spirit wouldn't leave an imprint?"

Cas frowned. "For a soul not to leave a blood memory marker would mean they have never transitioned. The connection between soul, body and spirit was never broken. If the body failed then another would have to be immediately found otherwise they would be trapped to the corpse."

"Wait. You're talking reincarnation and zombieism."

"Reincarnation, yes. Zombieism, no. A dead body cannot be animated in that way. That's why angels and demons need a living host. I mean the soul and the spirit would be tied to their body until the connection is broken. It's the same reason you have to salt and burn the remains of ghosts. It's their anchor to the physical world."

"So in this case, since you said a ghost would leave a marker anyway, we're looking at reincarnation?"

"Yes. If the body failed then it would simply be an anchor before the soul could move to another."

Dean looked between Cas and Sam and shook his head, "Reincarnation? Are we serious? Whatever happened to _it is appointed man once to die_ blah blah?"

Castiel gave him a dispassionate look and asked, "Do you have any idea how many times you have all died?"

Dean's brows rose, "Good point."

"Reincarnation is exceedingly rare. It only exists as fairytales among the angels."

"Better not tell the Hindus and the Buddhists," Dean said. "So, how can we tell if someone in our family tree's been reincarnated?"

Sam, Cas and Spencer all replied at the same time, "Blood memory."

"I am about to kick all your asses," he warned.

Sam exhaled and said, "Blood memory is a kind of visual catalogue that angels can see. Everyone who _ever_ died in your family, going back generations, is there. Got it?"

"Kinda," Dean snapped back.

Rolling his eyes, Sam turned back to the family tree. "So, I can take a look again at Aunt Diana and trace the name that's missing."

"Names," Spencer said. "He said missing _branches_ so there'd be more than one."

"Hold up," Derek said, "In one family?"

"Maybe it's the same soul being born over and over again?" Bobby offered.

Everyone looked to Dean.

He huffed, "Oh come on!"

"We would be safe to assume the possibility," Cas said.

"We're three seconds out from finding the truth so let's not assume jack shit, okay?" Dean countered.

"Okay," Sam said. "You guys get to the wall. Aunt Diana, you stand in the center there." Pulling up the book in his arms, Sam looked down to the tree. Spencer pulled a pad of paper and a pen from the desk and readied himself to write down the names. Sam and Diana locked gazes and Sam, remembering all Cas had said to guide him, activated his blood memory vision. All except Cas gasped at the bright electric blue that filled Sam's eyes. Sam watched as a multitude of people and faces rushed past him. Narrowing his concentration on the first name listed on the tree, a figure formed solitary in the space between him and his aunt. Shaking his head, he spoke another name. That new figure emerged from the first. He continued laterally, across the pages and then down to the next generations, tributaries to rivers.

Minutes passed with a new form appearing for every name he called until his mind spoke the name, 'Immanuel Veritas.' There was nothing there. No one came forward. The space was empty.

"Immanuel Veritas," he said to Spencer with a little surprise in his face. He knew that name. Diana had told him about Cardinal Veritas that very same day. The name wasn't lost on Spencer either. He knew, of course, that an occurrence of one did not a pattern make but there had to be something not entirely coincidental in it.

"Try Apsara," Spencer said to Sam.

"Who?" Dean asked.

"Immanuel's wife. They married in India."

Sam looked to his aunt and called Apsara. Nothing appeared. "She's not there either." He immediately understood Spencer's train of thought. Next he called up David Campbell. Nothing. His wife, Nishtha. Nothing. Their son, Ezekiel. Nothing. Marie Heloise le Blanc. Nothing. Jean Louise le Blanc. Nothing.

"All seven of them aren't here."

"I'll buy a clue for $300, Alex," Dean groused.

"I," Diana began, "I was telling Sam about the family and during the course of the conversation I named those seven people."

"How's it possible—" Derek began.

"Chuck's a writer," Dean said, wiping his face with both hands. "He also happens to be _God_, creator of the universe and everything in between. That's how it's possible."

"Dean's right. He sent us looking for clues which implies he was the one who left the clues. Chekhov's gun," Spencer said.

"Say what?" Dean asked. Bobby and Sam rolled their eyes. He shot them an evil look.

"It's another literary device like repetitive designation. The name comes from the writer Anton Chekhov who made clear that the rules are different than regular foreshowing or repetitive designation. The thing being introduced only has to be introduced once but at the time it has to seem insignificant. Later on it would have a definite importance. Just like we're finding blood memory to have. Those seven names are a perfect example."

"That means there could be a ton of crap we've overlooked so far that could come back to bite us in the ass later?"

"Essentially."

"Perfect."

"The point is, even in the 'story' we're in right now, all the literary elements and devices should be expected to be in use. My mom told Sam about those seven ancestors, we can be sure only those seven will be missing from the blood memory record."

"Okay, so we've got two couples, one of their kids, and a mom and her kid," Dean said, looking over Sam's shoulder to the family tree. "No way that's just one soul being born over and over."

Diana shook her head, going to Sam and taking the book from him. "Especially in the case of David, Nishtha and Ezekiel. All three of them were a family. All three souls were coexisting at some point in time."

"So we're talking three," Derek said. "At least three souls being reincarnated."

Now it was Diana, Bobby, Cas and Derek who looked not just to Dean but to Spencer and Sam as well. Spencer's eyes got very large and his throat got bone dry. Sam looked completely bowled over. Dean shook his head and flopped down onto a chair.

"Awesome."

"There's no way to be sure about that," Sam said, clinging to some kind of sanity. "That's speculation at this point."

Cas pondered it over and walked over to Sam, "There's a way to be sure, but it will seem counterintuitive."

"This entire situation is counterintuitive," Sam replied.

"See if you can call forward yourself and Dean through the blood memory."

"What?" Sam asked, his tone incredulous. "We're both here, Cas."

"But you have both died and entered Heaven and Hell. You should have made a mark on Diana. If you are both not there, that would be a confirmation."

Exchanging uneasy glances, Sam and Dean weren't sure what they would feel if Cas' theory turned out true and they weren't there, redefining the phrase 'born again,' or how they would feel if they were there, parts of their souls already existing as phantoms.

"I've never . . . _transitioned_," Spencer said. "So I wouldn't be there, regardless, right?" Cas nodded and Diana brushed her son's cheek, happy for that.

She moved back to the center of the room and Sam wished he could feel the air in his lungs as he took a breath and called his own soul forward. Cas gave a flinch of a frown before slowly nodding. Sam's face fell and his eyes became saucers.

"Nothing," Sam said. "I don't—" he began before biting his lip. Steeling up his courage he called Dean's imprint. Sam had instantly made up a million excuses for why his imprint wouldn't have been there and they were all tied to the knowledge that every time he had died it had never been long enough to mean anything but he couldn't make the same excuses for Dean. Dean had died. He'd had a funeral. He'd been buried. He'd transitioned forty years in four months. Dean had gone and yet . . . the space between he and his aunt remained empty.

"Nothing," he said again. The room was bordering on an unnatural quiet.

"I was dead months," Dean started, his voice low and rough. He turned hard eyes to Cas. "Did you know this? Did you even have the faintest fucking clue?"

"No," Cas said and the surprise in his own expression proved his words. "If this is true, if you, Sam and Spencer have moved through the generations then nothing is what we thought it was. I find it hard to believe that demons discovered the truth before Heaven. I don't know what the Elders are hiding but it's extremely important."

"Who are these 'Elders' you keep talking about?" Dean asked.

Sam and Cas exchanged glances. "The Elders are the seraphim, the cherubim, and the ophanim. They are the highest of the angelic orders and are at the top of the hierarchy."

"The throne angels?" Dean asked, narrowing his eyes. When Bobby and Sam again looked at him he huffed, "I'm not illiterate."

Bobby grumbled, "Stop acting like it then."

"Yes," Cas said, answering Dean's question. "These are the angels assigned to God's throne room."

"But since Chuck's been AWOL they've got way too much time on their hands now?"

"Essentially. What He knew, it would be expected that they also knew, which within the terms of the universes is very much."

"_Universes_?" Spencer interjected. "Plural?"

"Focus," Dean said to him. "Okay, so the Elders need to stop me from tossing Lucy into a lake of fire and Chuck points us to these seven people who may or may not be . . . _us_. Any chance they know not only how to exorcise an angel but also how to build a lake of fire?"

"I believe that is what Father is telling us."

"Alright. So, what? Do we do a spell or something? It's not like we can do a séance if they're us."

"The kind of magic involved in exploring a past life would be far too dangerous for the current incarnation of the soul."

Sam frowned, "So we have to caucus and we don't really have a way to actually do that?"

"We do," Spencer said and everyone turned to him. "How else do you have a face to face with people who lived in the past?"

"Oh, Christ," Dean swore, knowing exactly where he was going.

"Kid, you're not saying what I think you're saying?" Derek asked with curiosity and trepidation warring inside of him.

Spencer moved to the side of the room to where an ancient sepia globe stood. He spun it pointing to India, Britain, Boston, Hispaniola and New Orleans. "If Doc Shurley can play Doc Brown then so can we."

Sam smirked and said, "Time travel."

Dean groaned, "This is _not_ happening."

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	14. Trimurti

**Chapter Fourteen**

**Trimurti**

_Maharashtra__, 1731_

She slapped the backsides of the horses and sent them racing off down the lane. Hurrying to her charge who lay breathless in the dirt she shouted, "Move!" Pulling him up by the scruff of his neck she hauled him the few steps needed to throw them both in shadow behind the tall line of trees. She put her hand over his mouth to stop the sound of his labored breathing as she watched their many pursuers race up on horseback along the dark dirt road. She looked down to his wide coppery brown eyes and furrowed her brow in warning. He nodded and she released him, his breathing calmed.

She pulled an arrow from her deerskin quiver and drew her short bow. The sounds of their own horses, already down the lane and out of sight, drew the men past their hiding place and they zipped by in hot pursuit.

"We have to go back—" he began when she started to pull him up by his arm.

"Unless you have the desire to die, we're going to the harbor and we're leaving—"

He pulled away from her and stood to his full height which was a full five inches over her. Squaring his shoulders the scrawny old ascetic looked far younger than his sixty-four years. "Sara, I appreciate all of what you're doing for me but my life's work is in Mumbai and without it you might as well have let them take me."

"All of what I'm doing for you? What a stupid way to say it! And those books are not worth your life—"

"They are worth fifty of me and I am going for them."

Sara looked as if she would throttle him. "Mani, you are a mad, crazy, foolish old goat and I don't know why I even waste my time trying to save you!"

Immanuel smiled down at her. Her unusual green eyes were luminous behind smooth dark skin and thick black lashes. Apsara Mahalakshmi was four and twenty years of youthful defiance and irritability. And he loved her. "I'm sure you're right. What little I now know of matrimony, I doubt most women would exert _as_ much just to prevent widowhood."

She huffed and gripped her husband's wrist with the shocking strength he was still getting used to. She pulled him forward, almost slipping his shoulder from the socket, exclaiming, "Utterly incomprehensive ass!"

* * *

"Are we in the right place?" Dean asked standing in the outskirts of eighteenth century _Bombay_. "Hell, are we in the right _time_?"

". . . 1731 is the year they get married so . . ." Spencer absently shrugged, completely awed at the scenes around him. From their vista they could look out over the city as sunset was quickly approaching. It was like looking at history books with old Daguerreotype photography except, where they were now, _when_ they were now, predated the history of photography. No one now living had ever seen what he was seeing. What would soon become the second most populous city in the world was more like an active village now with central locations of large architecture and hurried trade. All along the docks were brick and sandstone buildings and tall ships drifted through the bay. Vaguely he added, "Best chance for getting both of them together in a room."

Derek Morgan had barely traveled beyond the borders of his own country in his lifetime much less hundreds of years outside of his lifetime. Not only was he on the other side of the planet, he was on the other side of reality. "This is wild," he mumbled.

"Great, awesome," Dean said, completely disinterested. "Is there a map on that thing?" He pointed to the tablet in Spencer's hands.

"Dean," Sam gaped at his brother, "How are you not even affected by this?" He asked. Sam had seen the fullness of Heaven and had seen the true, colossal size of angels in all their glory but he'd never traveled so far into the past, so deeply into time, and everything was a delight to his senses.

"Affected? Dude, I'm not here for the sightseeing. We're in and out before we step on a butterfly and change the entire future of India."

"That's not exactly how the butterfly effect happens, Dean," Spencer said.

"What the hell ever. All I know is we're so far back we do anything off the line and we could wipe out entire families from existing. So, as nice as the scenery is, I'd like to get done and move on." He pointed to the iPad, "and I saw Terminator. You drop that thing and when we get back home we'll have flying cars and cyborgs and towers of babies with wires hanging off of them."

Derek grinned at him, "Way too many Keanu Reeves movies."

Dean chuckled, "No such thing."

"Alright," Spencer said, looking to his screen and situating himself with the surroundings. "The abbey should be about half a mile down that road," he said, pointing down a cobbled path that led through trees to the foot of a tree-covered hill. "And a little up the—" Looking up from the screen he scanned the hill and caught sight of the red-tiled roof of the Abbey church of the Apostle Thomas. "There."

"Okay, good, so, uh," Dean looked to Cas, "How do we get the 411 without risking never being born?"

"The four-one—" he began, deep in thought.

"411 means 'information,'" Dean clarified.

"The _word_ 'information' is only one additional syllable. Is it really that difficult—?"

"The topic of _never being born_ is on the table," Dean impatiently reminded him.

"You may manage to change events but history is fixed," Cas lightly responded, walking past Dean and moving towards the cobble-stone road. "You've learned this lesson many times. Retrieve your four-one-one as you wish."

Derek, Spencer and Sam walked past him on Cas' heels along the path. Dean grumbled, "Jackass," behind Cas' back before rejoining the group.

* * *

The guards that had been sent to lay in wait at the abbey were lying dead on the ground, their bodies dragged off to the side and out of sight of any passersby. Sara brushed the dirt off her hands and eyed the road. The men who were in pursuit of them before would soon be back, a pair of unmanned horses hardly serving as a permanent diversion. She looked to the horse and cart that was half-filled with old tomes and she grumbled, "Jackass," before heading back into the abbey in search of Immanuel.

She was simply dressed in buckskin pants and a long-sleeved chemise topped with a man's small brown waistcoat. Her fellow countrymen couldn't comprehend her choice of dress as she passed through the country with her long black hair tied up in a loose bun and dressed as a young European boy and the European men figured her a strange fancy as the women labeled her impertinent and _quite_ abnormal. Her black riding boots fell lightly over the stone abbey floor and she kept her focus straight and didn't look to the bodies lying on the ground in the various rooms she passed. All of Mani's colleagues were dead, killed by the men who were now cooling out by the dry old well, both with arrow shafts protruding from their hearts. Seeing what was left of his friends affected him in a way she would discover soon, when he allowed it to penetrate. He was like that to a fault: he would absorb something, never forget it but also never allow himself to face or address it without help. She didn't know how he survived all these years without her. Surely even geniuses needed a shoulder to lay on when the world got too grand for even them to comprehend.

"Mani?" She called, heading up the stairs three at a time.

He peeked over the rail from the third floor. His cheeks were flushed and he was breathing heavily. "Was it always this many?"

"Lord knows how you got all of it out of Rome," she sighed, sprinting up the remainder of the stairs. On the third floor landing she saw him with his arms full as he struggled not to topple over. "How many are left?" She asked, pulling a few from his arms to steady him.

"Just one shelf," he replied, peeking into the library.

Following his line of sight she spied the leftover books. "Alright, not so bad. One more trip," she said, taking a few more from his arms before they bounded down the stairs. As they started to pass by the bodies she could sense his tension. "How are you feeling?" She asked him.

"You never want to talk about your own feelings, just mine," he said with a shadow of a smile.

"Your feelings eat you away. I have the happy knack of being able to laugh myself out of a dark mood."

"Liar," he said as they emerged into the low sunlight. "You get positively violent."

"Yes, and then I laugh," she smiled before something stopped her steps. Hooves, racing fast. "They're coming," she quietly said to him, hurrying to the cart and tossing the books in.

"Careful!" He hissed, laying his own burden gently down into the cart.

"You have got to be joking!" She harshly whispered before unhitching the horse. She mounted the animal and pointed to another just to the side, "Hurry yourself."

"What about the last shelf?"

Her jaw dropped, "You think you can go in and drag them out before we're surrounded? Have you no concept of time or danger?-!"

"Those are the books your father left us—"

Her demeanor quickly changed when, for a moment, she moved as if she would jump down off her horse and race up into the abbey all by herself, damn the danger, but then she looked to Mani and remembered herself. Her job was to protect him; it had always been her job to protect him.

"Let's go," she said, darkly. She had made up her mind and what she said was final. He could see that and he knew she was right. It was down to a choice of save what he had or risk losing it all along with his life.

Moving to mount the horse, Immanuel got one foot on the stirrup when something buzzed by his ear and his horse squealed, rearing up on its hind legs and its front legs thrust madly forward. An arrow shaft was deep into the animal's breast. Sara's horse reacted and jittered, almost throwing her off. Immanuel dodged as the wounded animal kicked and kicked when another whistling almost made it past him before he heard an inner thud and felt himself falling forward.

"Mani!" He heard his wife scream as he fell lifelessly to the ground.

* * *

"My Latin's not exactly conversational," Dean said, looking to Cas. "And if she starts talking Hindi or whatever—"

"I have already taken care of the language barrier," Cas said.

"What do you mean _already_?"

"They will speak, you will understand. You will speak, they will understand. It is the same way you can understand me even though I'm not speaking English."

"Wait, what the hell do you mean you're not speaking English—"

Spencer smiled, "So, you're like the TARDIS?"

Cas frowned, "I have no idea—"

"You hear that?" Derek asked, cutting off their conversation, his ears perking to a sound just beyond the tall banyan trees.

Spencer paused and listened. "Is that fighting?"

"Honeymoon over already?" Dean absently said, clearly hearing the clash of bodies and metal. He looked over to Cas who was gone. He turned to Sam who had also disappeared. "Yeah, just leave us behind—" he said as he, Derek and Spencer darted forward, heading to the abbey. They hit the clearing and were shocked to stillness to see a circle of about fifteen men, most of them bruised and bloodied, fighting a young woman who was practically still a girl. Another set of men were facing down Cas and Sam. Many more were already on the ground, locked in death, arrow shafts protruding from this way and that.

All of the men had completely black eyes.

Derek shivered hard. These were demons. Just like Meg. Just like . . . His jaw clenched.

"Tell me what to do," he said to Dean, his eyes growing hard.

Quickly reaching into his jacket Dean drew out a six-shooter and handed it to him along with a small box of ammo.

"Didn't figure we'd need this but always come prepared, right?" He grumbled, glad Bobby had kept the weapon safe for the last few months. "You've only got so many shots," he said, drawing out a long steel blade for himself, "Make 'em count."

"What about me?" Spencer asked, looking to the fray.

"Stay there," they both barked to him as they ran forward into the fight.

"Wha—" Spencer began but they were gone. Spencer had read about the Colt and the Demon-Killing-Knife as Dean liked to call it. Beyond that, there was no real way to fight demons if you weren't lucky enough to be Cas and Sam who were busy exorcising the horde by touch.

Off to the side of the battle Spencer saw a long, thin figure curled in on himself on the ground. There was an arrow embedded in his back. Spencer hesitated, wondering if he was one of the demons but he realized the arrow in him wasn't at all like the ones in the others. By the raven-black color of the feather fletching he could tell they were the same arrows the demons were carrying. Spencer ran to him.

"Hello?" Spencer said, dropping to the ground beside him. He knew it was best no to touch the arrow. Castiel could heal him. Spencer knew his job was just to keep him alive long enough for Cas to help. The old man flinched, his eyes squeezed shut against the pain. "Don't worry, I'm here to help."

"Who are you?"

"I'm, uh, a police officer . . ." It was almost the truth, or it would be almost the truth in a few hundred years.

The man opened his eyes and looked to Spencer. There was a moment within that moment where something deep inside of them both felt in motion and completely still. Their eyes were the same, exactly the same, and behind that, down into the soul, was a mirror.

"I know you?" The man asked but it was just barely a question.

"Do I?" Spencer said before pushing sharply away, having felt something inside of him draining away. He'd completed another person's thought. How was that possible? He looked back down into the eyes of the man bleeding out on the ground. His eyes. "Immanuel?" He asked.

The man hissed, clutching his chest. Spencer spun around to the fighting. More demons on the ground but Cas was in the thick of it now and so was Sam. Spencer turned back to Immanuel Veritas and pressed his hand against his bloody shoulder blade around the arrow shaft.

Immanuel began to cough.

"You'll be alrigh—" Spencer began before a cough rattled through him as well.

"Alright," they both said through a shared cough. Spencer and Immanuel frowned before looking back to each other. "What?" They both said, their facial expressions now mirroring each other. Another set of coughs raged within until they both felt like they could no longer draw in air.

Immanuel shouted for Dean just as Spencer screamed for Sara. Both Dean and Sara turned to them, confusion marking their faces. With a long wheeze, Spencer and Immanuel tried to breathe but it was as if their lungs had completely closed. Spencer's eyes rolled and he collapsed to the grass alongside Immanuel, his hand still flat against the wound.

"Cas!" Dean shouted to Castiel. "Spencer!"

Cas darted his eyes over to the still form of Spencer Reid. There were still just under twenty demons against the five of them. Time was now an issue and Cas evaluated an interesting and completely experimental solution. Reaching two fingers forward he pressed his tips to the head of the demon facing him. A half a second later Cas appeared laying hands on another demon some feet away. And on and on until just a few seconds had passed but like child's flipbook, Castiel seemed to be in more than one place at once as he breezed by exorcising one demon after another. In the blink of an eye there were nearly twenty Castiels and in another blink all the demons were falling to the ground. A moment later there once again stood only one Cas and he was crouching over Spencer and Immanuel.

"What just happened?" Sara breathed, looking to the mixed pile of dead and unconscious men on the ground.

"They got touched by an angel," Dean said, quickly stepping over bodies as he made his way over to Spencer. Sara was close behind him.

Sam dropped in close next to Cas and just quietly said to his mentor, "You do realize you have to teach that to me now?"

"When I figure out what it was I exactly did then I will teach it to you," Cas said, separating Spencer and Immanuel. With a touch, he healed Immanuel and as soon as Spencer released him his eyes began to blink open.

"What the hell happened, kid?" Derek asked, helping him to sit up.

"Wish I knew," Spencer groaned, his throat sore.

"Mani," Sara said, dropping in next to him. She inspected his wound but there was nothing there, not even blood. "Mani?"

Frowning, Cas said, "He should be conscious."

"What do you mean? I don't understand. What just happened?" Sara asked them, her bun undone, her long black hair disheveled and in a mass around her face. She looked back down to Immanuel, "Mani, come on, Mani!"

"Sara, I'm fine, I don't understa—" Spencer said before his eyes widened.

"What?" She snapped, looking at Spencer for the first time before she gasped. _His eyes_ . . .

"Something's wrong," Spencer said, his voice very still and quiet. He looked down to the still body of the old man on the ground and then to his own bloodstained hands.

"Spencer?" Dean asked.

"Yeah," Spencer replied.

"Mani?" Sara asked.

"Yes," Spencer replied, looking pale.

"What's going on?" Sam asked, looking to Cas. "Are they both in there?"

"I know very little about reincarnation, as I told you. Could it be like demonic possession? I do not know. It doesn't seem likely since they are both essentially the same soul."

"Ohh," Sara said before a relieved smile crossed her features. She looked to Spencer before poking his chest, "This is your avatar, old man. Now do you believe me?"

Spencer frowned for a moment before memories from a life he'd never recalled living passed through him. It was such an odd feeling. He didn't feel like two separate people in one body, he felt like one body that had simply lived one very long life. There was no division, no delineation between what he knew as _Spencer Reid_ and what was now a part of him in the form of _Immanuel Veritas_.

"Your father's books," he breathed, looking up to the third floor of the abbey.

"Exactly. Now I'm sure you'll realize why I was set on being furious with you forever for leaving them for last."

Dean looked to her and said, "You're taking this well, sweetheart."

Apsara looked up to him and froze. Those mossy green eyes.

"Oh my God—" Sam said, looking between the both of them. She and Dean had the same exact eyes. "What—"

Apsara laughed, "Lord, I'm a boy." She poked him in the chest as well. "I haven't been a boy in over a thousand years," she hummed.

"What the—" Dean began.

"We have to separate you," Apsara said, looking back to Spencer. "We may as well hole up in the abbey now that we have reinforcements."

"Can we just _verbalize_ what the hell is going on?-!" Dean shouted.

"The sun is almost down and we're out in the open. Can we answer questions _inside_ the large stone building or do you prefer being an easy target?" She lightly asked him.

Spencer turned to Dean who looked like he was a minute away from popping her in the face. "Dean, she's right. We have to get inside."

"Just tell me what's after them . . . you . . .guys?" Dean heaved a heavy sigh.

"Aeshma," Spencer said, throwing a knowing look to Cas.

A flutter of fear passed over Cas' face before he nodded. "Yes, we should get inside."

"Who is Aeshma?" Sam asked, unused to that look in Castiel's eyes.

"He's also known as Asmodeus. Some of his story is found in the Book of Tobit, the story of Tobias." Everyone turned their glances to Spencer. "He's the King of the Nine Hells. Each level has its own master. When my battalion stormed Hell to retrieve Dean we had to pass through all the way to the ninth-level where he was being kept. A petty demon controls every individual level of Hell but there is only one king of all nine levels."

"But he's still just a demon—" Dean said.

"No, he's not. I told you," he said, looking to Spencer, "that Lucifer initiated the fall of a third of the angels from heaven. That was from _all_ orders of angels including from the ranks of the Elders."

"Wait, you're saying this Aeshma is a fallen _throne angel_?" Dean said, the severity of the fact finally hitting him. "But why is he after them?" Dean asked, gesturing to Apsara who was holding the still body of Immanuel.

Spencer sighed, "Selective breeding. He's building the perfect vessel."

"Whoa, hold on, he wants to . . . with you . . ." Dean asked, looking to Sara.

She nodded, "Every few generations he tries when he can find us. Sometimes he succeeds. A few of my ancestors were akin to Nephilim. It's the only way to build a vessel strong enough to contain him."

Spencer continued, cobbling information from a different lifetime with what he knew of the current situation. "His power eclipses Lucifer's exponentially and the way it's written, if he defeats Lucifer in combat, then it will be the race of _demons_ that claim the Earth."

It was all about the bloodline . . .

Everything suddenly fell into place and made perfect, horrific sense. That's why they needed Spencer, that's why they tried to break him. It wasn't to stop him from performing his destined role, they had no plans for it to get that far; it was so he would fall in line to perform a role they had destined for him. Aeshma was a fallen angel which meant Spencer would have to invite him into his skin. Only if Spencer were broken down enough would that even become a possibility.

What was it Cas had said? The _race_ that defeated Lucifer inherited the Earth. Dean's death was the trigger to draw Lucifer out from within Sam . . . Spencer was the vessel for the king of the demons. They weren't trying to rescue Lucifer, they wanted him to stand as an opponent for Aeshma so he could fall. Both sides were gunning for a grand final fight, each with their own prize-fighter in their corner. Heaven wanted Michael riding Dean, Hell wanted Aeshma riding Spencer and Sam was the ultimate target.

Dean turned a suspicious gaze on Sara, "And how do you know about all of this?"

"It's not _my_ fault your beliefs limit the plausibility of reincarnation. Mine don't." She stared into Dean's eyes which were her own, "You and me, we've been around since the dawn of time." He gulped. "Now can we get inside?"

"Yeah."

* * *

Night fell over the Abbey church of the Apostle Thomas. Castiel and Sam removed all the bodies from the church and set up wards around the perimeter as Spencer and Apsara poured over the shelf-full of books left to Sara by her father.

"So, your family are hunters?" Dean asked as he and Derek stood guard, looking over the dark woods surrounding them for signs of activity.

"Yep," Sara said, rubbing her eyes. "It's not so much a genetic line as it is a history that follows our souls. There are certain symbols and events to look out for when one of us is born and when we're found, we're adopted into the family, charged with the task of finding the others like us. That's why Aeshma keeps trying. The bloodlines fail to intersect and then they die off. The souls jump around as they please. In one of my lifetimes I was a Mayan. Of course, we didn't call ourselves Mayans but as you know, they're all dead now and so is the blood. "

"How many are you?" Dean offhandedly asked.

"Oh come on, if you're here you know. There are three of us. From the look of your brother's eyes, he completes your circle."

"How do you—"

"The eyes. They're the windows to the soul and remain the same generation through generation." She held up the book she was holding which showed a set of illustrations depicting eyes. There was a set of round green eyes with long, feminine lashes. There was a set of deep, narrow, blue-green hazel eyes which had an almost black shadow over them. The final set were wide and inquisitive and a golden brown. She looked to the body of Immanuel which lay prone on a small settee in the corner and then to Spencer. "Mani found me and didn't even realize it." She shook her head, "Aeshma can tell that the blood is starting to merge. Mani is outside of my generation but we met in our lifetimes. That's why you're here isn't it? All three of us in one generation?" With a sigh she said, turning back to her book, "Must be the end of time."

"What are we?" Dean asked, turning from the window.

"Every belief gives us different names; we're different aspects of fate, of God, of life. In the belief I'm being raised in currently we're considered the Trimurti, the Hindu trinity. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Mani and Spencer are the incarnations of Brahma, you and me, we're the avatars for Vishnu and Sam would be the incarnate of Shiva. Brahma is the creator and generally remains neutral."

Spencer nodded, feeling like all of this should be some kind of a shock but it wasn't. He'd heard it all before, he'd just been living as another person when he heard it.

"Strict librarian," she smiled to him. "Then there's us," she said, gesturing to Dean and herself. "We're the preservers. We fight and don't stop fighting just to keep everything together. If you've ever felt the weight of the world on your shoulders, it wasn't your imagination. It's exhausting, isn't it?" She asked him. Dean blinked. "Oh God, I have to realize this is all new for you. I was raised with all of this from when I was a child. It was easy for them to find me. There aren't a lot of Indian women with green eyes."

"And Sam?"

"Oh, Shiva, he's the only one of us with a dual role. He is destroyer and transformer. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Everything that is destroyed is transformed. He is the only one of us that lives with a choice to make."

"To decide to either kill everyone or . . . not?" Dean asked her.

"Pretty much," she hummed.

"So, Brahma is God?"

"Not _the_ God. That would be _Brahman_, the Supreme Cosmic Spirit."

Spencer looked up to Dean and Derek and said, "Doc Shurley."

Dean threw up his hands, "Of course. _Chuck_."

That seemed to be the only thing that burst her shell of nonplussed-ness. Sara looked up, her eyes wide, "You've met Brahman?"

"Oh look, she's alive," Dean huffed.

Her smile slowly fell. "It really must be the end of time."

"Not _helping_," Dean said. He looked to Spencer, "Now that you're all mind-melded, anything in those books about making a lake of fire?"

Spencer looked up to him and furrowed his brow, "I'm not really done but—"

"Anything about exorcising an angel?"

"I wouldn't think s—"

"Alrighty then, untie this knot and let's go."

"Dean, you act like we haven't learned so much already—"

"Kid, that demon, angel, _whatever_ is looking for the perfect vessel. That's you. You stay here and you're dead, got it?"

Spencer gulped. "Oh . . . right."

Dean gestured to the door, "Sam's out there, _hello Satan_. It's all he needs for his battle royale."

Spencer turned to Sara and said, "We really need to undo this . . . _now_."

"How did it work in the first place?" Derek asked her. "You didn't seem too surprised about it when it happened."

"Mani was injured and Spencer held him. The souls are the same so it just escaped the weakened body. I know there's a remedy here. I never really looked for it because I never figured we'd ever meet our incarnations. There's lore on it, of course, but it was all fable."

"How is Aeshma walking around without a vessel?" Dean asked them.

"He has one," Spencer replied. "Just not a 'perfect' one. Same way Lucifer had a vessel but it wasn't Sam so it wasn't right."

"How did they survive this in the original timeline?" Derek asked.

Spencer gulped and said, "He's so much more powerful than Lucifer, he . . . burns through his vessels faster."

"How much faster?"

Sara quietly answered, "Three days."

Dean's jaw practically hit the floor. Lucifer hadn't burned through his vessel even after _months_. If this was a sign of the power . . . "How much time do we have left?"

Sara looked to the clock on the wall. "Mani and I were married almost seventy-one hours ago. That's when the vessel was taken. If we survive the next hour, Aeshma won't be able to take another vessel in this generation."

"Which vessel is he using now?"

Sara and Spencer exchanged glances before she said to them, "Gandharva . . . my brother."

* * *

He walked along the docks shrouded in heavy bark cloth. His bare feet singed the wood beneath him. Apsara and Immanuel had not been seen at the harbor and the contingent of rakshasas he sent looking for them had yet to return. It was now night in Mumbai and his vessel, promised to him by a misguided brother who believed his pure strength of will could protect his sister from him, was falling apart. The boy declared he would stop him or die trying. Aeshma grinned; the teeth behind dry and chapped lips were charred and blackened. Either way he _would_ die trying but not before he won his chance to plant his seed. The end of the world was coming and he needed a vessel that was truly worthy of him.

But damn it! He was running out of time. Once he burned through this body, finding another vessel would take another lifetime. _Where were they_?

He glanced up towards Malabar Hill and his eyes narrowed on the faint dot of light he saw there. Everyone in the abbey should be dead. If so, who was there to light the candles at night?

* * *

"Guys, I think I've found it," Spencer said, looking up and catching Cas' eyes.

Sam looked down to the book sitting open before Spencer. "Oh crap. That's a long list."

"Whatever," Dean said to them all. "We zap everybody in this room to fucking _Chile_ and wait out Aeshma for, what? The next ten minutes?"

Sara smiled to him, "And _that's_ why I'm the smart one."

"Hells yeah," Dean grinned and winked at her before catching himself. He seriously wondered if he should feel dirty for doing that. Whether she was _him_ or not it didn't matter. She was definitely his great-great-_etcetera-etcetera_-grandma.

"Alright, let's go," Sam said.

Cas' face was shocked still. "I just tried."

Derek looked to him, "What do you mean?"

"There's something—"

"Do you smell that?" Sara asked, hurrying to the window. They all ran to the window only to see the bright red and orange of flame in the near distance. The side of the hill was on fire. "He's here."

Dean looked to Cas, "He can block your signal?"

"Aeshma was a seraph. The _burning ones_. I can do nothing in his proximity."

"Are you telling me we can't fight him, we can't run and he's gonna be here in—"

A wall of flame erupted up the side of the wall and they all fell back from the window, the oxygen singeing from their lungs. The fire swallowed the ceiling and Spencer looked up to the flames, recalling the night before, nearly three-hundred years into the future when he was under a roof of fire.

Dean coughed, gasping for breath, "He's here," he choked. He spun around to take stock of his companions and locked eyes with Sara. For once in this entire mess of a situation she seemed scared. How else was she supposed to seem, Dean asked himself. A demon wearing the skin of her brother wanted to . . .

"Wait . . ." Dean said before rushing over to Apsara and pulling out the Demon-Killing Knife. She looked up to him and a moment of understanding passed between them before she took the knife from him and sliced a gouge in her palm. Gripping hands they held tight as ravaging coughs began to tear through them.

The double doors leading to the library were thrown open, pushed off their hinges as a man entered the room. Half of his face was seared completely off the bone; the other half was covered in swollen red welts. He was covered in ash and stood naked before them. Everyone in the room was rendered completely immobile. They couldn't move, they couldn't speak. With terrified expressions they could only watch the fallen seraphim burn through the room.

Aeshma's gaze scanned the space until it hit the unconscious form of Apsara Mahalakshmi, the nth incarnation of the Paraclete. How . . . _pretty_ she was in this life.

He bent towards her, his fiery hand just hovering over her when he felt the emptiness inside of her. The void. The body was just a shell.

"What—" he looked to her hand which was linked with the hand of the man lying next to her. He saw the blood dripping between them. Taking his palm he hovered it over the man and felt that soul his vessel was used to calling _sister_. "No," he rumbled, low and long, the floor beneath them trembling and shaking, the plaster of the walls cracking and falling. Bending quickly he gripped the throat of the man, the usurper. He squeezed hard and drew him up to standing, his hands burning the skin at his neck.

Dean wheezed and gasped as his eyes fluttered open. He could feel his skin burning, he could smell it scorch. Aeshma would squeeze the life from him and turn the bone in his neck to dust for this. Dean clawed at the hand but it was like hot iron.

"Stop," he choked, two lifetimes now melded and the sister looked down to the eyes of the brother. "Please."

A curl came to Aeshma's lips. "Yes. Beg."

Those green eyes began to roll when something inside of Aeshma began to fight and resist. It was a voice, a small voice, that of a child's really and it was calling for his sister. What was left of Gandharva clawed and punched and kicked and fought the monster restraining him. This would be his last act as a living man and his last gift to his sister was a life free of worry from the monstrous demonic angel.

This would soon be a lesson Aeshma would remember for the last days. When he was ready for the very end, when his vessel was perfected, the Paraclete would have to die.

Gandharva pulled his hand back and Dean's body fell gasping and choking to the floor, deep red and black burns eaten through his flesh. Dean squinted up to the man standing before him and for a moment, Sara saw the spirit of her brother. He was free. He had thought he could win against the darkness but it wasn't his destiny even if it was his dharma.

Wrapping his arms around himself, Gandharva ground out, "Leave this place."

Cas felt his power return and in a moment their group was transported clear across the city of Mumbai as the Abbey church of the Apostle Thomas burst into an inferno of flames.

* * *

"God that's nasty," Dean said, swallowing the concoction Cas assured him would separate out his girly memories from his actual memories. Granted . . . he wasn't sure which was which anymore. "This is so confusing," he added, shivering in the pre-dawn light.

"Isn't it?" Spencer asked, adjusting his glasses and taking the potion in one gulp. "I mean, I feel as if I've really been alive sixty-plus years. Everything is just as real as anything."

"Dude, don't get me started. I have two and a half decades of a girl's life in my head. Trust me, I don't give a damn how many years you've been around, _nothing_ compares. I suddenly _completely_ understand feminism."

They were holed up in an abandoned old granary at the outskirts of the town. The future Campbell library rested in a horse cart to the side and the volumes from Apsara's father that had been lost in the fire found themselves downloaded in full to Spencer's iPad. The unbinding potion had taken a few hours to steep and cure and during those hours, Dean did his best to avoid any and all eye contact with Spencer. Dude was his cousin but now half of him was only seeing her husband and it was beyond uncomfortable.

"Make the connection," Cas told them and Spencer and Dean took the hands of their respective unconscious other-selves.

"What if the wrong half transfers?" Dean mumbled, looking down to Apsara, seeing himself.

"That would be . . . _disconcerting_," Spencer frowned.

"I don't think anything's happening—" Dean began when Sara and Mani's eyes began to slowly blink open. Dean and Spencer looked to one another, concerned. "Do you feel—?"

"Yeah," Spencer replied, completely understanding what he was saying.

Immanuel and Apsara rolled up onto their elbows and squinted to the guys across from them. "Do you feel—?" They both began to ask.

"Yeah," Spencer and Dean answered.

"What's going on?" Derek asked them, looking between Reid and Dean.

"Well, thankfully the passion—"

"Dude, different word," Dean warned, screwing up his face.

"The . . . _conjugal affection_ is gone."

"But?" Sam encouraged.

"The memories. They're all still here," Spencer said, visibly confused.

Mani and Sara looked to each other and nodded. Sara grinned to him, cocking her brow, "Passion?" He grinned and shrugged.

"Oh come on!" Dean said, turning away from them in disgust. "How the hell can you still get all fire-in-the-pants _and_ have our memories?"

Sara shrugged, "We didn't live 'em. And dude," she said, using a new word from her shiny new vocabulary, "Remember that whole, _never being born_ concern? If we don't get all fire-in-the-pants you don't get living. Got it?"

"This is _so_ wrong on _every_ level," Dean said, jumping up to his feet.

"Oh come on, it'll come in handy," Sara said, likewise jumping to her feet.

"How?" Dean asked, crossing his arms over his chest. "Now I know how to do a French twist?"

She scoffed and reached behind her and pulled an arrow from her quiver. She arched her brow and it came to him.

"Holy—" he began, looking down to the arrowhead. Etched on it was a set of tiny sigils. They were the same kind of sigils on the Demon-Killing-Knife.

"My family's brand of hunting. Dhanurveda, science of the bow. Now you know how to replicate it," she said. "Make those markings on pretty much anything and kill all the demons you want."

Dean nodded fighting to contain himself, "Okay. This is suddenly a trip that's kinda worth it."

Sara smiled, holding out a fist and Dean arched a brow before giving her a bump. He smirked at her, "Still don't know how to cook, though." She punched him in the arm.

Immanuel went to Spencer and they both looked down to the iPad. "Hmm," Mani hummed. "Still prefer paper."

"Me too, but, hey, I don't have to worry about an inferno at least," Spencer shrugged.

"Very true," Mani said, chewing on his lip. "Next stop?"

"Hispaniola?"

"Agreed."

"_When_ is the only issue."

"You decided to come here the year we were married because mom—" Mani closed his eyes and pursed his lips before correcting, "Because _your mother_ mentioned I was married to Apsara when she told you our story. Simplest way to evaluate a new _when_ would be to revisit the story and see what bullet-pointed event she mentioned for Marie's time in Hispaniola. I mean, you easily could jump over everything and head straight for New Orleans when you could meet up with Marie and Jean Louise in one setting but there must have been a reason Haiti is specifically separated in the story."

"More than one visit?"

"It's rather telling she is the most powerful witch in the family and Bobby said that an exorcism can be a form of potent spell. She may be the key to the first part of the problem: exorcising Sam."

"Very true," Spencer said, pondering over it before a bright and sunny smile engulfed his features. "I have always wanted to brainstorm with myself. This is amazing!"

Mani beamed, "Exceedingly!"

Derek watched Reid and Reid and shook his head with a grin. How the universe even managed to contain all of that was a miracle in of itself.

Cas looked to Sam as they stood off to the side, separated from the rest, "We're going to have to find a way to limit Aeshma's control over us or the next time we meet with him—"

"I know, Cas," Sam said, nodding. "I know. He'll wipe us out." And Sam knew that statement was most true for him. Both Heaven and Hell wanted to dig his grave as soon as possible.

"1790," Spencer announced, looking up from the screen that displayed the family tree. "Our next _when_."

"Time to vamoose," Dean said. He looked to Sara and for a moment the walls between them dropped. "He did it to protect you," he quietly said.

"Brothers," she replied, stealing a glance to Sam. "Always doing the wrong things for the right reasons."

"Yeah."

"Be careful," she said to him before looking him up and down. "We only get to be boys once in a blue moon. Don't break this one. He's kind of handsome."

"Thanks, _Grams_."

She punched him again. Hard.

Spencer and Immanuel awkwardly waved each other goodbye. Sara and Mani clasped hands and just as the sun rose, the group of five time-travelers left Maharashtra, India behind.

* * *

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	15. Running Up That Hill

**Chapter Fifteen**

**Running up that hill**

"Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars? Have they not forced them to consume feces? And, having flayed them with the lash, have they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes? Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup? Have they not put men and women inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down mountainsides into the abyss? Have they not consigned these miserable blacks to man eating-dogs until the latter, sated by human flesh, left the mangled victims to be finished off with bayonet and poniard?"

_-Personal secretary to Henri Christophe  
_

_._

_._

_._

_Saint-Domingue, 1790_

He doted on her and they could have only suspected why. The senior Monsieur Dubois, from the day the child was born, paid more attention to her than to any other, even more so than he had to his own children. There was substantial suspicion to the parentage of the child seeing as even though she was, in color, as rich as the earth, her eyes were of such a curious green that it was doubted that her mother had remained faithful to her husband on the day of conception. All questions however, were muted to whispers. The Code Noir would have removed the child and mother from the ownership of Monsieur Dubois and to be the cause of his loss would be to cast oneself as a marked man, destined for death for as attentive as he was to the child on the day and subsequent days after her birth, he was still, in all practice, the most ruthless and vicious master that Saint-Domingue had ever seen.

La Bonne Mère was the name of the sugar plantation that sat in the rich valley at the foot of mount Morne Bois-Pin. It was there that Marie Héloïse Dubois was born and lived a life of superlative comfort while all around her suffered the most extreme pain and indignities as of yet unknown to the human race. The man she grew up calling _bon-papa_ was little more than a tyrant and a monster to those around him, raising his children in his image. Her mother, called Ange, had been given to her daughter as a handmaiden at a young age. It was only the proximity of mother to daughter that saved Marie Héloïse from adopting the manners and opinions of those living alongside of her.

"I understand, maman," Marie said, staring up into the anxious eyes of her mother through the glass of her white and gold gilt rococo-styled vanity mirror. The light smell of smoke curled around the large bedchamber as Ange passed a pressing comb through her daughter's hair to straighten it. The early morning light drifted through the tall windows and a barely cool breeze wafted through the room. Marie's powder-blue velvet redingote was laid out on the four poster bed. "I'll be careful."

"I don't trust the way René has been looking at you," Ange said, smoothing the thick waist-length hair. "He means to do you harm."

"As you have said," Marie rolled her eyes and raised an orchid from her vase.

"I don't think you understand what that means—"

"I think you worry too much, maman. Uncle René—" The hot iron comb touched the back of Marie's neck and she squealed, jumping forward, the orchid falling to the hardwood floor. She looked up to the solemn expression in her mother's face and understood the burn hadn't been a slip of the hand. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, repositioning herself. "_René_," she corrected as Ange continued to tend to her hair. "He doesn't see me like that, I doubt he'd spit on me if I was on fire. And if he did mean to do me harm, grandpapa wouldn't let him." Ange never corrected her daughter when she called their master, Théophile Arnaud Dubois, _'grandpapa'_ as it was the only thing she'd ever been allowed to call him.

René Étienne Dubois was Théophile's son and heir to La Bonne Mère. He was sixteen years Marie's senior and she had been raised seeing the younger Monsieur Dubois as part of her adopted family but they had never been close. Whereas the others of the family Dubois were considered as siblings, René was a hard man, almost as hard as his father but never showing Marie the same devotion as the father had. She liked him very little and he made no pretensions of his own feelings towards her. She, however, was not granted the leeway he was in expressing her disdain for him and so, in all circles of society she was the perfect example of feminine grace while disliking him in secret but he made no secret of his dislike of her.

"You put too much confidence in him," her mother told her, speaking of Théophile, placing down the comb and brushing out her hair. "Does he love you? I don't know if he's even capable of it. Are you a curiosity? Maybe. Do not trust him to shield you. For years I've been wondering about what he truly holds in his heart and for years I've been waiting for something to happen that would destroy this fantasy world of yours."

"You want it to happen," Marie quietly said, looking down to her well-manicured hands.

Ange gripped her daughter's jaw in her hand and they both stared into the glass. "I would pluck out those eyes if it would make you see."

Marie shivered and turned away. "I can finish on my own. Thank you, maman."

Ange dropped her daughter a short curtsy before leaving the room.

Reaching down, Marie took the orchid in her hand, crushing the flower in her palm as she brought it up to the surface of the vanity table. Dropping the petals before her she looked at the destroyed pink and white bulb and simply stared at it as time ticked away.

Passing a hand over the petals, she watched as they floated up against gravity. Dead, crushed by opposing pressure and yet, still in motion. A perfect self-portrait.

* * *

"There's not a lot written about this time of her life. She wanted to forget it which, granted the history and events, is perfectly understandable," Spencer said, studying the family tree and recalling the story his mother had told Sam. Scratching a few things in a notepad, he continued, "Her daughter was conceived here and the ship she boarded for Louisiana is scheduled to leave port tomorrow."

They stood in the center of a large trade market that was in the height of the full hustle and bustle of the morning shopping hour.

"Why's it necessary to cut it so close to when she was—" Sam began before shrugging.

"Seriously," Derek added.

"That's the event that makes Hispaniola important to her. For whatever reason, Doc Shurley thinks we should be here at this point in time."

Dean shook his head, his hands shoved into his pockets. "I don't like it."

"Me either," Spencer murmured, putting the tablet away into his side bag. He glanced to Castiel and said, "Besides the fact that we can't apparently change history, if we do in this case, we'll cease to exist."

"Great," Dean limply said, extending the vowels.

"You may not be able to change history but you _can_ die here so be careful. I'll be back shortly," Cas said which caused everyone except for Sam to turn to him in utter and complete shock and surprise.

"Whoa whoa whoa, hold on," Dean protested. "Where are you—"

"I have to request an audience with the Elders on the matter of Aeshma."

"Last time I checked they were the bad guys too."

"The comparison doesn't stand. The Elders are satisfied with Lucifer sealed inside of Sam for the time being. With Michael gone they have no desire to see Lucifer released as they have no champion to challenge him. They would rather destroy you than permit you to win that battle."

"Thanks, that's comforting."

Cas ignored him. "Aeshma on the other hand will exploit the current situation and has been if we correctly connect him to the demon activity of our timeline. The Elders will find themselves in the position you call the rock and the hard place. _Stone_, I suppose."

Derek nodded, "They don't help you with him, they end up losing control of Earth."

"Precisely."

"Wouldn't the easiest way out of the whole thing be to have you deliver me to them?" Dean asked.

Castiel frowned, "Dean, if you haven't noticed, you'd be the only one who could kill Aeshma outside of the circle of Elders. Seeing as they don't have vessels _at all_, they may have wanted you dead before but knowing that he now has a vessel in perfection it is the last thing they would want." Looking to Spencer, Cas added, "You would be their new target."

Spencer's mouth dropped open.

"Don't worry; if they knew about you before now, they would have surely killed you so your anonymity is safe. For the moment." And with that, Cas vanished.

Spencer stood staring at the spot Cas had been standing in, his eyes wide and unseeing. The prospect of Heaven gunning for him completely erased everything from his mind.

"Reid?" Derek said to him, coming up beside him. "Kid?"

Shaking out of his surprise, Spencer looked over to Derek, Dean, and Sam and gave them a limp smile. "We should . . . there are—um—" he couldn't get his thoughts together.

Dean went to him and a little bit of Apsara came out in his thoughts as he recalled her thinking that her job was to protect him. That it had always been her job to protect him. Dean understood what it meant. It was the same as it had been all those years growing up with Sam and having it be his job to guard him as well.

"You've got two angels, an FBI agent and a high school dropout on your side—" Spencer looked away, unable to hide the uninvited smile. "You'll be okay." Taking a deep breath, Spencer nodded. "Good, so point us in the right direction."

"Well," Spencer said, finding his voice again. "Um, since there _is_ so very little she wrote about her time here, there's not much of a direction to point to." He handed Dean his notepad. "But, there's only a few plantation owners with the name _Dubois_ on the island and only one within any kind of reasonable distance to the port where the ship leaves from."

"La Bonne Mère at Morne Bois-Pin?" Dean asked, his pronunciation atrocious.

"The Good Mother. That's the name of the plantation. Morne Bois-Pin is the name of the mountain range it's near. It means 'Gloomy Pine Woods.'"

"Of course it does," Dean grumbled. "You'd think that would be on auto-translate."

Spencer frowned. "Proper names don't translate."

Derek looked up to the green and grey mountain in the near distance. Low hanging dark clouds obscured the upper limits and a thick fog shrouded most of the rest until the entire formation looked like something from another world.

"Anything else we know about her?" Dean asked, following Derek's line of sight and looking up the side of the mountain.

Spencer sighed and pocketed the notebook before saying, "She's fifteen."

"What?" Derek asked, turning to face Reid. "She's just a kid." He knew and understood history. He knew and understood the history of African slaves. He knew and understood all of that but the prospect of meeting with a girl they all knew would be victimized in the matter of a few hours, knowing there was nothing they could do to stop it . . . it left a hole inside of him that threatened to widen as time passed. She may have been Reid and Dean and Sam's blood but as he looked around to the spectrum of brown faces around him, knowing what some of their futures would be in this place, known as the most brutally _efficient_ slave colony in all of history, all he could see was his own blood, his own people.

"Let's go find out why Chuck thought this would be a good idea," Dean said, his eyes still taking in the dark and lonely grandeur of the mountain.

* * *

"Good morning," Marie said, entering the summer breakfast room. The wide and long skirt of her redingote swept the spotlessly clean inlaid wood floor. She went to Théophile, "Bon-papa," she said kissing his cheek as was their regular morning custom.

"How is my little _swift_ today?" Théophile asked her, not lacking in any polite graces. No, in fact showing her more graces than he bestowed on his own children.

"Very well, sir, thank you." Turning to René she said, "Uncle." He rolled his dull blue eyes at her and turned his face. It was his usual greeting and it didn't affect her. "Morning, Noémi," she said to a woman a few years René's junior.

"And to you, little one," Noémi replied, using their common nickname for Marie. Noémi, the belle of the county, knew it to be fact and behaved accordingly. With beautiful black hair and striking blue eyes she would draw in a grand bride price for her family.

"Kitty, I hope you're ready to be left behind," Marie said to a girl who was a few years her senior who wore a dark purple redingote of her own. Her hair was done up in glossy blonde curls and she had a certain mischievousness in her look that was perennial.

"Be careful what you say, little one, for it will be I leaving you in the dirt." They both giggled which elicited a groan from René.

"And good morning to you, Auguste," Marie said to the last of their company, a boy just a few months her elder.

Auguste, who took after his elder brother but also was too young to openly defy his father, only nodded to Marie. There was no mistress to the table as the mother of the four Dubois children died soon after Auguste's birth.

They sat to morning prayers and grace before the servants came in with plates upon plates of breakfast. No one said thank you to the servers, Marie having attempted to once and being roundly criticized by the others, Théophile ending the criticism with a lesson that _thank you_ implied that those serving their table had a choice and since they have no choice, they are not working out of any kind of beneficence on their part, and so gratitude was not only unnecessary it was uncalled for. Not understanding that, she took it upon herself from that day on to say her thanks to the servers on her own and in private.

"Where will you be riding today?" Noémi asked them.

"Along the river to the foot of the mountain and back," Kitty said with a shrug.

"Lord, I would like to follow you, I'm in need of a little exercise, but I dare not risk freckles in this heat."

René drawled out, "Marie has all the luck in the world not to ever risk freckles."

In her mind, Marie was cutting him in half with a fast retort but instead of speaking her mind she just gave him a happy smile. "It is rather lucky, isn't it?"

No one but Théophile knew that when the girl gave that kind of an answer, she truly meant it as a verbal kick in the balls to his eldest son. And he was proud of her for it. Everyone else thought her intolerably innocent and even a fool. René would have been bolder in his attacks on her if he could have said with any definitiveness that she was not his father's child but the question of her eyes coupled with his father's seemingly genuine affection for her drove him mad. He couldn't align the fact of what he knew his father to be outside of her presence with the man he was in her presence. It was said that the girl's mother was involved in the dark arts and it began to deeply bother René that his father could be enchanted in some way or another. René enjoyed having his way with those under his control. Most who had ever been brought to his chambers never left alive and it was known all over La Bonne Mère. The young women and the young men were all warned to never catch gaze with the younger Monsieur Dubois for fear he may _take interest_ but his interest was of a purely carnal quality. He considered his father's interest in Marie as absolutely abnormal.

"Last week, the laundress informed me of a special event, Marie," Théophile said to her. It was the same announcement he'd made when Noémi and Kitty had blossomed into womanhood. Marie's cheeks flushed hot red. "It tis true," he smiled. "Look how my swift blushes, there's nothing for it."

"Good lord, father, we're eating," René said with evident disgust. Théophile cut his eyes in his son's direction and René felt that sharp coldness that would radiate up his spine when he'd set his father in a foul mood. He quickly dropped his gaze. The entire room felt chilled over with his unspoken anger.

Théophile turned back to Marie, a bright smile covering his rage, "You girls go on your ride and later we will discuss your entry to the Winter Début. It is time for you to be presented to society."

Marie's eyes lit and she looked to Kitty who seemed completely unable to contain herself. The girl bounded up, Marie circling her arms around Théophile's neck and kissing him again and again on the cheek, "Oh grandpapa!" Spinning to Kitty, the girls clasped hands and raced out of the breakfast room.

Théophile Arnaud Dubois spoke darkly to his other two children, "Noémi, Auguste, I would like a private word with your brother." Both could not move fast enough to be out of the room. He turned to his son. "Do not believe I tolerate your behavior under some misguided idea that somehow, deep down inside of my breast, my heart beats in any kind of affection towards you. It does not."

René swallowed, his throat dry.

The senior Monsieur Dubois stood from his seat and rose to standing. His figure, well formed for a man of fifty-six, was long and broad chested. "You will endeavor to treat her better; you will try to make her as happy as you possibly can. Do you understand me?"

That was enough for René to spit out, "But why, father? It's full well time you told me what the devil that little imbecile is to me."

"What she is?" Théophile asked, turning his back to his son and looking out the window to the beautiful tableau of the Caribbean countryside. He'd been waiting fifteen years for this moment in time. He sighed, his eyes flashing pure and opaque white. "Does it matter what she is?"

Eyes blinking back to their usual blue, Théophile turned to his son. "We have plans for the both of you and if she is afraid you will endanger everything." He gestured to the side of the mountain. "It is very easy to lose yourself in those woods and three days really is tragically little time."

René frowned, having no idea at all what his father was saying.

* * *

Derek walked alongside Spencer, watching his face, noting his expressions and reactions to the scenery around him or lack thereof.

"I thought we agreed we weren't going to profile one another?" Spencer asked, squinting to him under the glare of the noon sunshine.

"If I thought profiling would help then you better believe I would but I think the situation's a little out of our league."

Reid nodded. "I'd be inclined to say outside of any sport we've ever encountered. It might not even have _leagues_."

Morgan never ceased to appreciate how Reid often used his strictly literal mind to make a play on words. Most of the BAU team and almost everyone else failed to see the kid's humor but it was there, hidden under his mask of 'genius.'

"Honestly," Derek began again, "How exactly is a person supposed to react when they hear what you've just heard? There's nothing in profiling that can tell me which of your reactions is normal or abnormal."

"It is what it is, Morgan," Spencer said with a small shrug.

"Is it? Maybe. Doesn't stop me from worrying about you. And I do, you know. Worry about you I mean, believe it or not."

"Believe it or not?" Spencer asked, completely incredulous. "Between you, Dean, Bobby and my mom it's a miracle I was let out of the house."

They shared a smile.

"I know you're worried," Spencer said, looking down to his feet shuffling along on the wide dirt path. "But, same way it works with our team, it'll work here. We tend to defer expertise to those of us with strengths in those fields. I do the geographic profiling—"

"I kick ass," Derek added with a grin.

Spencer nodded, smiling, "You've been known to kick ass on occasion. What I mean is, in this situation, we have to defer to Dean, Sam, and Cas. If Dean says not to worry, I can't do much more than that."

"So you're not?" Derek asked, calling him out on that. "Worrying I mean."

"Trying not to. My stomach feels like I just swallowed baking soda and chased it with vinegar. Apparently, Dean's job is the world in general, not me personally. I don't really want to wake up a week from now another of Castiel's apprentices. I've been waiting to grow older my entire life," he frowned.

The prospect of living forever, as interesting as it was, had to be weighed against forever remaining _Dr. Spencer Reid_, and not simply _Agent Reid_, a title he wanted so badly but which had remained forever elusive. It seemed like people would always see him as a kid no matter what. He was turning thirty soon and he couldn't even look his own age. The idea of staying this way forever terrified him. He knew Dean would keep on his promise, he knew no matter what happened Aeshma wouldn't use him as a weapon but what was unsaid was the consequences of that. Like Sam, would Spencer find in the end he only had two choices? Death or a new, alternate life outside of humanity? Having all of Immanuel's memories and life experiences inside of him, Spencer craved that now, to earn the patina of age and to meet someone, fall in love and continue this odd history of his.

"I've got you, okay?" Derek said.

"You can't stop whatever's going to happen."

"Says who? I don't have a destiny written in stone, kid. I can do anything I want and right now, I'm gonna make sure you have every chance to grow into the crotchety old fart we all know is in there," he smiled.

"I'm not sure how to respond to that," Spencer said, partially appreciative and partially offended.

"Dean?" Sam asked paces behind and out of earshot of Spencer and Derek. "What do we even say when we meet her? She's literally one of us and she'll be walking into danger in a couple of hours."

"We do what we have to do."

"What does that even mean?"

"Pretend the only thing we know about her is she's heading into a bad situation."

Sam frowned before saying, "But then we'd—"

Dean nodded, "Do what we always do, yeah, I know."

"You're gonna try to save her—"

"Heavy on the _try_. We fought destiny once and won," Dean gave his brother a sideways glance before adding, "Kinda."

"Dean, if we win this one we actually lose—"

Turning on his brother, Dean huffed and nodded. "Sammy, listen to me. There's no way in Hell I'm gonna sit by and watch a fifteen year old kid go through that. I don't care who she is. She could be Gandhi's mom and it wouldn't change a thing. You're gonna tell me you can look her in the face, see that she's either you or Spencer and just step to the side and let her go through this?"

Sam looked away. "What if she's you?" God, he felt like a bastard for even saying it but he had to. Sam had always been the pragmatic one, he knew how to make decisions he may not like living with. Dean was all emotion, thinking he could always save everyone, damn the consequences. It was just who they were, who they always were and now they both knew it was who they were meant to be. "If she was you, could you really protect her knowing that meant mom and Aunt Diana, me and Spencer would never be born? Could you really do that, Dean?"

Dean clenched his fists and shook his head. It would take Sam to put everything in stark and rational perspective. "I don't know," he said, honestly. "I've been down there; I know there's nothing anybody can do to her up here that our soul hasn't seen in Hell so I _really_ don't know." And he hated Sam for it. For a split second he honestly hated his brother for making him doubt and making him remember.

"Dean—" Sam began, his eyes wide at the confession.

Dean walked ahead, joining Spencer and Derek, leaving Sam and the rest of the unsaid conversation behind him.

* * *

The Winter Début. It was the coming of age cotillion held in December for all young ladies who were to be introduced to society. It was all about the gown, the gloves and the hair and thankfully she had nearly four whole months to prepare. Marie knew her mother would have words for her when she returned to La Bonne Mère but she didn't care one jot about anything she could possibly say. Her world had distilled down to the Début and only the Début. Nothing else mattered.

"We will have to have Mme. Margaux start on sketches as soon as possible. It can't be anything from the look book, that would be a disaster!" Kitty said, quite decidedly, watering her chestnut quarterhorse by the river bank. "Laure Archambeault will be attending the Début this year and her older sister, Josette, wore something from the plates for our Début and wouldn't you believe, three other girls chose the same exact style! Nothing could save them seeing as all the dresses were in white and so, like an identical puppy litter they descended the stairs, embarrassed as anything. I doubt Laure will learn from Josette's mistake and you cannot possibly disgrace papa by walking in looking like . . . well, an Archambeault to be frank."

Marie shook her head, her mind dizzy with Kitty's fast words.

"And you must have the grandest pannier. If you cannot walk into the room _only_ sideways then it couldn't possibly be wide enough. You will need a new set of stays, of course. Mme. Margaux will have to start on those and fabric! We'll have to have it sent over from Paris, nothing else will do."

Marie blushed, "Kitty, the revolution?"

"Damn it all to hell, I forgot. Well, I suppose we can settle for Italian silks but Lord won't you look gaudy!" They giggled uncontrollably. "If we didn't mind trading with the English we could even try Indian silk but then you'd be far too beautiful to even stand and poor Noémi will quickly become an old maid." Another round of giggles went through them. "Freckles indeed. How she imagines she'll meet men under the roof of the family estate is beyond me."

"Do you really think I'll look beautiful?" Marie asked, leading her gray to the grass.

"You're a Dubois woman; it would be utterly inconceivable if you weren't," Kitty said with no hint of irony. "And believe me, Josette Archambeault's little sister will in no way outshine _my_ little sister." Kitty cocked her head up, looking as regal and as proud as any woman of good breeding could look. "We have preparations to make," she said in a deadpan voice, mimicking the airs of her brother René.

Marie was in mid-laugh when a gunshot rang out, the sound tearing through the clearing. Spooked, the horses shuffled and the girls fought to calm them all the while scanning the area for the source of the shot. Off to the distance they saw a band of men racing towards them on horseback. There were two dangers in the Saint-Domingue countryside: one was the Mawon or the Maroons, escaped slaves who banded in the forests and mountains forming tribes akin to the Natives who once occupied Hispaniola. The Mawon were known to raid plantations at their leisure. The second danger was common bandits, usually European sailors who jumped ship at Cap-Français or at Port-au-Prince. They were known to pillage small outlaying villages and leave the blame to fall on the Mawon. It was the second kind of danger that was headed right for them.

The girls jumped on their horses and set off, racing back towards La Bonne Mère.

Another shot ripped through the air. The sound of a girl's agonized scream followed.

* * *

The travelers came upon a clearing that revealed a newly constructed wooden footbridge. The bridge, fifteen feet over the water, led across a wide, shallow river that was dotted with large mossy rocks. They walked to the middle of the bridge and took in the scene of tranquility before them on both sides. The sky was a cornflower blue with fluffy, cotton ball clouds drifting lazily across the island. Looking down to the water they saw the occasional fish fly by in beautiful tropical colors.

"I doubt there's one place in the world that still looks like this," Derek said, taking in the lush greenery on both sides.

Spencer was inclined to correct him but decided, this once, to just appreciate the meaning of the words and not the actual words themselves.

The sound of gunshots pulled them out of their reverie. Going to the right side of the bridge the group looked across to the bend in the river to see a grey, almost white, horse galloping through the water, headed towards them. Atop the horse was a girl in a powder-blue riding outfit, her long black hair flying behind her. Across her lap was another girl, clearly injured, her blood running down the side of the white horse. Behind them raced a group of six men, also on horses, firing off shots after them.

"What the—" Sam began when a final shot tore a scream from the grey and it lurched forward, its neck snapping on the shallow rocks, the girls being thrown forward, tumbling in the water and against the stones just a few feet before the bridge underpass.

Dean was already leaping over the railing and landing in the calf-deep water before anyone could process what they'd just witnessed. "Hey—" He called when the girl in the powder-blue suit turned to him, her gaze purely feral, tinged in pain, her left arm hanging limply at her side. The sun was in his eyes and at her back so he couldn't make out her features but he raised his hands.

"I just want to help."

She was shaking and they both saw the band of six men close in twenty feet before them. She crouched down to her companion. She was barely alive, her skin ashen, a bullet hole torn through her side.

"Kitty—"

Spencer, Derek, and Sam fell in behind Dean.

The girl in the blue turned to the bandits and she said in response to Dean, "I don't need help." Narrowing her eyes on the men she held up her good hand and pictured the orchid from her vase that morning. The men raised their rifles and pressed their fingers against the triggers when the girl twisted her wrist and each man spun, in turn, the guns going off against the other. The men fell backwards, their heads shot clean off from pointblank range.

"Holy—" Dean began when the girl began to waver. He went to her but she held her hand out, gesturing to the bleeding girl behind her. He bent to scoop her up in his arms, his hand pressing against the wound. The girl in the blue wavered again and Derek went to her, wrapping his arm around her. She slipped, unconscious, into his hands.

* * *

Katherine Sabine Dubois screamed, clutching her side, tears streaming down her face. She knew she had been shot, she felt the pain even worse than it had been but there was no hole and no blood to be seen. Her blonde hair was wet and her curls limp. Mud and dirt caked her redingote.

"What the devil are you trying to do to me?-!" She squealed, pushing Sam away from her. "You said you'd make it better!"

"I—"

"You're the worst voodoo man I've ever met!"

He huffed, "I am _not_ a voodoo man!"

"Oh, _apparently_ not because you suck!" She snapped.

Sam sighed and rolled his eyes.

They were sheltered in a small clearing a half mile from the river. Marie Héloïse was seated on the ground with a damp cloth over her forehead and eyes, shivering through the pain as her body healed. The pain in the healing was almost unbearable.

"He's not a vodouisant," she moaned, feeling nauseous. "His magic is much greater."

"It's not magic, would you two stop saying that?" Sam begged, looking between the two of them.

"If it's not magic, what is it?" Marie groaned. "I think I'm going to vomit," she whispered, swallowing a lump in her throat.

Derek bent close to her and took her hand, "You'll be okay, alright?"

"Thank you," she quietly said, looking down to his fingers and blushing. Derek watched her cheeks redden and he almost chuckled.

"It's . . ." Sam frowned. "It's kind of magic, I guess."

Kitty looked like she would kick him in the face, "I'd rather be bleeding right now, at least the bleeding didn't hurt!"

"Listen princess, calm down," Dean said, walking back to the clearing from fetching water, having heard most of the screeching from the bank. His tone took on the authoritative air he'd used in his hunting heyday. "You were three seconds from dead and dead doesn't hurt at all, so make your decision, we can go back to that if you like."

Kitty glared up at him and then paused. His eyes . . . She huffed, "Listen, fine, I'm grateful. I understand. _We_ understand. Is it so hard for you to put yourself in our position and see that the series of events add up to a lot of justifiable cursing and screaming?"

Derek glanced over to Kitty and seemed to give her a non-verbal, 'She's got a point.'

"Thank you," Marie said to all of them, keeping her eyes closed against the nausea as Spencer re-wet the cloth and placed it back on her forehead. "My sister and I do truly thank you."

"Sister?" Dean asked, looking between the two of them. He totally got Derek and Spencer's 'brother from another mother' vibe but this was—

"Yes, thank you," Kitty snapped, not wanting to deal with ignorant comments. "Now if you would be so kind as to convey us back to our estate I'm sure my father would be glad to have you over for dinner and reward you for your troubles."

"Yeah, I'm jumping for joy on that one," Dean said. He glanced to Marie and mumbled, "You definitely dipped the better end of the gene pool."

"We were actually on our way somewhere," Spencer said to her. "Sammy can probably send you home—"

"Oh, as soon as possible," Sam said, glaring down to Kitty's sharp eyes. "My pleasure."

Marie leaned forward, the cloth dropping from her face, her gaze to the ground as she moved to cinch up her hair into a loose bun, "Yes, we would appreciate that. Grandpapa will be worried."

Dean frowned, "I thought you said you were sisters?"

Kitty held up the back of her hands showing the skin there and said, "Obviously not, _moron_."

"You know what sweetheart? Maybe if you _were_ sisters you would've been lucky enough to get an _actual_ personality!"

She narrowed her gaze on him and dryly said, "Oh, you don't like my personality, what ever shall I do with myself?"

Marie held onto the tree behind her and started to rise when her head spun. She began to sink when Derek caught hold of her again. She laughed, her eyes still on the ground as she avoided looking at him. A man outside her family had never touched her before and from the few times she'd snuck glances in his direction she saw that he was devastatingly handsome. Something fluttered in her chest every time his skin brushed against her own.

"I think Mr. Sammy will have to have a fairly strong constitution if he thinks he can carry us both back to La Bonne Mère," she said, allowing Morgan to grasp her shoulder. She turned to finally catch his gaze. He could probably be her father but she really didn't care, he was beautiful. And goodness, so strong.

Morgan looked down to the girl in his arms and he exhaled, "No."

"Hmm?" Marie said with a frown. She glanced over to the others, the sun bathing her face. "Is something wrong?" She asked, touching fingertips to her lips and moving to her cheeks. "Have I something on my face?"

"Oh God—" Sam said looking between her and Dean. Spencer just dropped his mouth in shock.

Dean and Marie looked to each other and there was a moment within the moment . . . they were moving or were they standing? They stared into the mirrors of each other souls—

"Are you—" They began at the same time.

Spencer quickly went to Dean and pulled him around, forcing him to break eye contact with Marie. "She's injured. You can't even look at each other," he quietly said to Dean. He recalled that moment when he stared into Immanuel's eyes and the soul started to meld on its own. Dean looked to Spencer, his back to his younger self. He nodded. Everyone could see he was shaken.

"What happened?" Kitty asked them, watching the faces of the men fall and seeing Marie look completely lost.

"Sam, send them home," Dean said, his voice rough.

"Dean—" Sam began, an ache in his chest knowing what Dean meant by it, knowing it was his own fault for planting the seed in his brother's mind. They wouldn't save her. They wouldn't even try. He should have known better to even say anything. Dean would always sacrifice himself for his family, even if he stood before them as a child.

"You were right. I can't," he said, leaving out the rest, leaving out the words 'protect her.' "But you knew that."

"I didn't—"

Dean shrugged, "Yeah, you did." He moved away from the clearing and wanted to get as far away from them as he could.

"This makes no sense whatsoever," Kitty gaped. "And as strong as you are I don't see how on Earth you'll manage to get us home on your own. Can't any of you help him? Seems rather unchivalrou—" Sam touched two fingers to her forehead and Kitty disappeared.

Marie gasped, clutching onto Derek. "What did you—what are you?"

Sam looked down to her face, into her wide green eyes and he hesitated as his fingers hovered over her brow. "I'm so sorry," he said, looking away. He touched her, feeling the soul radiating from within and immediately recognizing it, asking it to forgive him one day. Marie vanished.

* * *

Marie lay on her bed as Ange fussed over her. She'd never seen her mother so concerned. Looking up into her grandfather's face she sighed and smiled a little, "It's such a strange story, isn't it? Could any of it be true?"

Théophile took her small hand and smiled down to her, "I'm sure it was some grand vision and we mustn't discredit it. It's a sign and we should be grateful for it."

"But what does it mean grandpapa? He healed us and moved us in the blink of an eye. I have to believe it was all imagined but Kitty saw the same thing. She was about to die and he brought her right back."

"Show me what he did, don't just say it but show me," Théophile said.

Marie held up the three fingers of benediction and blessing as she touched the middle and index to his forehead. A chill ran down Théophile's spine and he fought to hide his trembling. If the child understood the power inside of her she could have exorcised him right then and there.

"Yes," he fought to speak, a hard smile on his lips as he rose and turned away. "A miracle."

Ange eyed him carefully as he moved to the doorway.

"Rest child. I need to check on Kitty."

"Alright."

The moment he left, closing the door behind him, Ange went to her daughter and knelt next to her side. "It was an angel and he is afraid of it."

"What?"

"You know it was, child stop acting the fool. Remember his look just now, he's terrified."

"Why, if you're right about grandpapa, would an angel send me back here?"

It was a question Ange had been asking herself and she couldn't find a good answer. Feeling like she was grasping she began, "But the one, the one with your eyes. He—"

"Yes, he seemed upset, I don't know why, but he told him to send me back. Maman, you have to stop. This is my home and if that _was_ an angel, then even Heaven thinks that I belong here. What other way to see it is there?"

Ange looked away from her daughter, a sick feeling crawling through her stomach. Something wasn't right.

* * *

"I swear, if I knew they were angels I would have held my tongue," Kitty laughed through her pain as she clutched her side. She rested back against her pillows, Noémi holding her hand. "I was absolutely _ghastly_ to the one that reminded me of Marie. He was _so_ aggravating, so pompous and high-minded, the complete opposite of her, I swear. She's always so quiet and polite and he was just downright rude! But, Lord, they saved me didn't they? If this was a lesson for me I'm sure I'm slated for Hell and there's nothing to save me," she said with a giggle.

René looked down to his sister and frowned, "Whatever you two fell into, it must have been very good."

Kitty gave him a pinched look. "Oh yes, of course that must be it. We went to the tavern and got sloppy drunk and in less than three hours we're home, stone cold sober _and_ injured. Shut up, René."

"There are no injuries."

"And when you have a headache I don't say _show me where_," she retorted, sticking out her tongue.

Auguste stood in the corner, his expression wide and open. He was terrified.

"I believe you," a voice said from the door. The four Dubois children turned to their father. "It was very likely an angel."

"Father, you can't seriously—" René began.

"Come," Théophile said, calling his eldest son forward. René followed his father out of Kitty's room and they walked down the corridor together. "It seems we will not have the time needed to make this quick, painless or easy. He had hoped that you could have fathered many vessels over the years seeing as the last time he had the chance he was usurped. A few hours at a time and you would surely have survived. Everything was going so well despite your impertinent attitude towards her; she was happy and comfortable."

They were headed down the staircase and even farther down to the wine cellar. "Father, please explain yourself. You can't possibly believe the girls met with an actual angel—"

"I can believe it," Théophile said, glancing to his son. "We've been watching for the signs and have it down to a fair science. The blood is merging quickly; to have this bloodline meet with one of the three before her birth, the end is coming fast. In all truth, an angelic intervention was to be expected. Why they sent her back is not something I will question, just be grateful for."

"You're not making any sense—"

A door René never knew existed was hidden behind a tall tapestry in the stone wall of the wine cellar. Théophile pulled back the fabric and opened the door, gesturing his son inside.

"What—" René began when he saw the huge open space decorated like a demonized Hounfour or a fully satanic temple. It stank of death and in the center sat a stone alter with strange symbols scratched into the stone. "Father, what is this?" René demanded, turning to the senior Dubois. He lurched back at the pure white of Théophile's eyes.

"Oh my boy, I haven't been your father for years."

* * *

Dean Campbell sat alone at the edge of a narrow brook watching as the afternoon sun skipped rays off the water. He didn't want to think, he didn't want to have any kind of thought pass through him because he feared all he would do was think about her, where she was at that moment, worry if she were scared, hurting. Why was it so easy for him? It shouldn't be so easy for him to just sit back and allow it to happen to her. Why, if she were anyone else, would he have fought tooth and nail to save her from a future Cas would say was fixed in stone? Why, _only_ if she were anyone else, would he have fought at all?

Every part of him wanted to jump up and run to save her but every time the feeling flashed inside of him he was pressed down with the knowledge that saving her now changed the lives of everyone he loved. Granted, as it was, maybe their lives needed changing. His mother was dead, his aunt was so torn by guilt and sadness that she forfeited her sanity for a sense of comfort. His brother was . . . hell, he didn't know what Sam was anymore and as for him? He often felt more of a burden to Lisa and Ben than as a real strong member of his adopted family. He could see himself give it all away if some part of him could allow it. But in the gap of it all stood Spencer. If saving Marie meant undoing all that Spencer had built for himself in his life, could he do it? Could he ever consider it? Marie had lived a separate life from him but at her core she was Dean and would be Dean which meant anything he did would ultimately be selfish. Could he trade who Spencer was for his soul's happiness now?

"Sammy wanted me to come and find you," a voice said from a few feet behind him.

Dean glanced over his shoulder to see Spencer Reid squinting at him. "Hey, kid."

"He didn't think you wanted to see him just now," Spencer said, moving up beside him and dropping down next to him. "I thought he was right."

"I swear he's so—"

"Pragmatic?"

"Is that a synonym for _obnoxious_?"

"He's . . . rational, like Castiel. He always was."

"You're rational too," Dean pointed out.

"Theoretically yes, but hardly ever in practice. I've put down my gun when faced with an unbalanced kid with a rifle. I've split up from my partner when facing an unsub known to gut people in a matter of minutes. I trusted a cold-blooded killer to make the right decision with regards to a guy that assaulted his daughter and for some reason I was surprised when he didn't. I make emotional decisions all the time. Sometimes you just trust people and sometimes they disappoint you. That's never rational or logical."

"You think letting that kid go off to have God knows what done to her is logical?"

"It is. If you knew you couldn't change it and you knew that if it didn't happen you wouldn't exist, then yes, it's perfectly logical." Dean nodded, something hollowing out within his soul. Spencer sighed, pulling off his glasses and squeezing the bridge of his nose. "But, like I said, I'm never that rational in practice."

Dean frowned. "Spencer?"

"We both know we can't just sit here and wait for night to come and go. You feel the same way I do," he looked down, "maybe worse if it's even possible."

"You think I can save her?"

"I think we both know you have to at least try."

"Even if it means we're never born?"

"I think you should, _especially_ then. Who are we as people if we only act in our own self-interest? How can we live with ourselves?"

"Sam's not gonna . . . well. You know."

Spencer nodded, both of them looking out over the water. "I think we're both aware that Sammy's not exactly known for his excellent decision making."

Dean smirked, shaking his head. "Nope."

"Granted," Spencer said, slipping back on his glasses, the wind blowing his hair off his shoulders. "Neither are we."

Sighing, Dean repeated, "Nope."

* * *

She ached all over and her arm felt the absolute worst. The day had been _interesting_ to say the least. Moving to her window she looked down to the green valley and appreciated it all the more in that very moment in time. Heaven had saved her; this was her place in life. All the questions she'd had growing up were now answered.

"I'm home," she sighed. A small stone just nearly missed hitting her in the face.

"Whoops!" She heard a whispered hiss from below. Leaning over she looked down to see two of those strange travelers. The one with her eyes, Dean, had a handful of pebbles in his palm. The one with the glasses was turning beet red. "Wow, got ya on the first guess. I guess that's . . . what is that?" He turned to his partner.

"Kismet?" Spencer groaned.

Dean looked back up to her. "What he said. And there are seriously a shitload of windows here so it must be."

Marie leaned over and gaped, whispering, "What on _Earth_ are you doing here?"

He extended his arms in some strange echo back to chivalry, "We're here to rescue you."

She could not begin to understand. "From my _house_?"

Dean whistled with a grin, "Nice digs." His smile fell, "Now, get down."

"I will _not_ get down. _You_ told Mr. Sammy to send me here and now you want me to leave?"

"Pretty much. Think you can jump?"

She shook her head in utter disbelief. "You're insane."

"And you're in danger. Somebody in there has it out for you and they're gonna do it either right now or soon so you have to get your ass down here."

"Smooth, Dean," Spencer said to him with a sigh.

"Kid," Dean said, looking up to her. "Just look me in the eyes and tell me I'm lying."

Marie looked down to him ready to tell him to get the hell off her lawn when that lightheaded feeling passed through her again. She felt herself falling into him and her knees got weak.

"No," they both said, mind and memories melding. "You're not lying."

Spencer quickly put his hands over Dean's eyes and broke the connection. Marie pinched her eyes closed and breathed hard. "Who are you?" She asked, the idea of leaving her home bringing her to tears. Her mother's fears suddenly filling her, completely justified.

"We don't have time. Get down first, get answers later."

Quickly nodding, she turned and slipped her small feet into a pair of Wellington's and went to the sill. Sitting on it she swung her legs over and looked down to them.

Dean held up his hands. "Whoa, you're really gonna jump?"

"Back away," she hissed. Dean and Spencer stepped back. Marie kicked away from the window and zipped down to Earth from the third story window. Just before her feet passed the first floor she slowed and lightly touched down to the grass.

"Holy fuck," he swore before he threw his hands up. "Great! Sara was an Amazon and you're the Blair Witch. What the Hell? Just 'cause I'm a guy I get shit?"

Marie had no idea what he was babbling about.

"Never mind him," Spencer said, taking her hand and the three of them raced off across the countryside, the sky in the midst of a red sunset.

* * *

Ange entered her daughter's room carrying a tray of supper. Finding it empty she set the tray down and called out for Marie. There was no answer. Frowning she moved to the window only to catch a faint glimpse of her daughter racing away from La Bonne Mère and into the woods of Morne Bois-Pin, two strangers at her side. Ange breathed hard and held her heart, feeling it lighten for the first time in fifteen years.

"Run," she whispered.

Wearing the skin of René Étienne Dubois, Aeshma entered the room. Ange could feel a magnification of the evil she'd felt radiating off of Théophile all those years since Marie was born. She calmed herself and turned around.

"Master René, is Marie in Miss Katherine's room?"

"She's not here?" He asked, his look darkening. There was something about the skin, something about the bones underneath. There was something missing in his humanity, even more so than René lacked on an everyday basis.

"Did you want her? I'll go and fetch her for you," Ange curtsied and went to pass him.

He reached out and gripped her arm as she passed, his flesh burning her flesh. She hissed and flinched but he held her tight. "Where is she?" The demon asked.

Ange held her head high and proud. "I'm glad not to know."

He boiled her blood and welded her screams in her throat. Her desiccated corpse fell to the ground.

* * *

"Spencer, I can't—" she gasped, holding a stitch in her side. The forest all around them was dark and was well earning its name. "It hurts too much." Dean was tempted to toss her over his back, whether or not they got knotted together. He was committed to this all the way so it didn't really matter did it? He moved towards her when gunfire echoed off the trees. Spencer took her hand again and they sped deeper into the thick of the humid woods.

"Why are they shooting?" Marie breathed. This was still Dubois land and she was still a Dubois.

"I don't think they're aiming at you," Spencer whispered, ducking into a small hollow with her.

"It's nearly pitch dark, they could be aiming for the moon and still hit the wrong target," she said.

Spencer granted her that.

"Listen," Dean said, pulling out the Colt and the Demon-Killing Knife. "You two head back to camp and I'll lead them away."

"Dean, we're not leaving you—"

"We get her shot and it's a lose-lose all around, right?" Dean said, not waiting for his answer before heading towards the sound of bodies on the ground.

"He's a madman," Marie said, leaning against Spencer.

Holding her, Spencer thought of the sheer irony of the situation before bringing her back to standing. "Yes, he is," was all he said before they took off again.

* * *

"Aim carefully," Théophile said to his men as they combed the forest. "I will have the man's head who hurts her."

Dean listened to the man from a perch some feet above in the spiny limbs of a pine tree. He considered that those weren't the words of your usual sexual sadist.

"If a bullet even grazes my granddaughter you'll be buried alive."

Oh, so this must be the grandfather. Dean frowned. There was so much missing in Marie's story that Dean was having a hard time reconciling his speech with the man who would eventually attack her. What was the truth?

Dean shifted and a twig snapped. He froze as the grandfather's face peered up to the trees. Dean stayed deathly still and watched the man. The dark blue eyes seemed to be searching but it was peering just off to Dean's side. Suddenly the color turned white and Dean had to bite his lip to hold his reaction. A white-eyed demon?

A gunshot a quarter of a mile off in the direction of camp rang through the woods. It had to be Spencer and Marie. Damn it, he hadn't seen any of the party break off from the main group. The man's eyes returned to blue and he flicked his gaze to the sound.

"Come!" Théophile shouted.

Steeling his courage, Dean leapt down from the branch and landed in the midst of the team of men. "Stay your asses right there."

The group of five riflemen turned to Dean, their eyes as black as coal.

With a smile Dean said, "Awesome. That makes things _way_ easier." He pulled the trigger.

* * *

A sound like thunder crashed right next to them, a bullet gouging a tree just above their heads. Spinning to the origin of the shot they didn't see the drop off before them and they both were sent careening a few feet down a leaf-covered embankment.

"Spencer?" Marie called out to him from the darkness as she moved to regain her footing.

"Let's go," he said, his voice strained. He took her hand once more and they clawed their way through the trees until they hit a clearing broken by a stream.

"Marie!" They both spun around to see Auguste emerge from the wall of trees, a rifle in his hands.

"Auguste, why are you firing on us?"

"Usually when one fires, one stops running," he answered with a grin.

Marie frowned. This wasn't at all like the Auguste she knew. As much as he enjoyed mimicking René he was never this masterful in recreating his disdain.

"Marie, cross the stream," Spencer said, seeing something in the boy before him that felt sickly familiar. Something about the way he oiled his way down to the bank of the stream. Something about his face in the moonlit darkness.

"And who are you to tell my sister what to do?" Auguste quickly raised the rifle but Marie stepped before Spencer, shielding him.

"Please, put the gun down."

Something flickered in the light and for the flash of a second they both saw pure oily blackness pass over Auguste's eyes. Marie gasped and Spencer gripped her arm, pulling her with him towards the water, slowly repositioning himself in front of her.

"What—"

"He's not your brother anymore," Spencer said.

"Oh, so you know who we are, do you?" The thing inside of Auguste asked. It quickly raised the gun and squeezed the trigger when Marie brought up her hand and sent it flying away from him, breaking his finger in the process.

"Damn," the thing said, shaking out Auguste's hand. "They said you had power." He held out his palms face down and bits of stone and debris rose off the stream bank.

"What is it?" Marie asked from behind Spencer as they stepped backwards into the stream.

"A demon," Spencer replied and the thing in Auguste gave a small bow.

A bit of stone went flying to Spencer, faster than a bullet. Marie moved her hand behind him and blocked it from connecting.

"My master has been waiting for you, Marie Héloïse. Almost two decades, he is patient." Three bits of rock and a long, razor sharp splinter of wood zipped towards them. Marie blocked the stones but she missed the wood by a fraction and it dug its way deep into Spencer's side.

"Exorcise him," Spencer ground out, clutching his side as blood began to push against his fingers. They reached the middle of the stream.

"I don't know how—" she said, clearly starting to panic.

"It's a spell. It can be anything you want but just get it out of him."

"I can't—"

"Yes, you can. Trust me."

"You don't even know me," she breathed as a wall of debris was sent towards them. She exerted almost all of her energy to stop the most of it but Spencer held his ground against the silt at the bottom of the stream before a stone broke through the barricade and ripped through his shoulder.

"Spencer!"

His body was thrown backwards by the force and she clutched him in her arms as they fell to the ankle-deep water.

"Do it," he urged her, pain blooming through him.

Marie turned to Auguste—no, to the thing within him—and she thought back to Mass and everything she'd ever been taught about the power of faith and of words. It didn't really matter what you said as long as you believed in what you meant.

"Get out of my brother," she said, rage boiling inside of her.

The thing smiled, "You really think that'll—"

"Get out!" She screamed and the demon lurched forward in a gag. "Never set foot in this world again!"

Auguste's body was thrown forward and out of his mouth a black cloud was spewed that zoomed up into the heavens. Auguste went limp and collapsed to the dirt.

"See?" Spencer whispered up to her, his body shivering. "Perfect."

"Help me," she called out into the darkness, shock freezing her. She pressed her hand to his wounds but there was so much blood. "Somebody help me!"

"Marie!" She spun to the calling of her name and saw as Dean bounded out of the woods and into the clearing.

Dean looked to the stream and his heart nearly stopped beating. "Spencer!" Dean shouted, racing into the water and dropping down beside them. "No, no, no—" He said, tearing off his jacket and pressing it to Spencer's shoulder. This wasn't supposed to happen. This was the last thing that was supposed to happen. The shallow water around them was darkening. Spencer's mouth was just slightly ajar and his breath was shallow.

"Help him," Dean said, looking to her.

"I—"

"We have to make this right, he can't die here," Dean said and his words hit her in a place deep in her soul and they rattled inside of her.

"I can, I can try something. A transference of energy but I, I don't think I'm strong enough," she said, the lingering pain within her from a healing that had yet to complete. "I need a conduit and my body isn't up to task."

"Can you use someone else?"

"You?"

"If you can, do it."

She quickly nodded. "Take one hand and hold onto him and take the other and dig into the earth, fan your fingers like roots." Dean took Spencer's arm with one hand and did as she instructed with the other.

Marie hovered her hands over Spencer's heart and closed her eyes. She began to quickly whisper, Dean unable to make out her words but he felt the hairs all over his body start to stand on end. The base of where his hand was dug into the streambed started to glow and the light moved up his arm, the skin of his hand becoming translucent, his veins and arteries striking a dark contrast. Dean's arm was ice cold. Her whispers grew in speed and strength as the glow moved through Dean's chest and to his heart which spasmed at the cold and he gasped, drawing in a long, dry gasp. The ice exploded throughout his body and his eyes rolled, all the warmth in him moving into the hand holding Spencer.

Spencer Reid bucked up and forward, his eyes growing wide behind his glasses. He drew a harsh, struggling breath before it broke off into ragged coughs.

Marie broke away from him and, breathing heavily, looked to him. Quickly moving the fabric from his shoulder she saw the wound was just about healed. Looking to his side, the cut there was almost faded. She beamed. They did it.

"We did it," she said, looking up to Dean. Dean was sitting on his heels, his head down, his chin nearly touching his chest. He was completely still.

"Dean?"

Spencer coughed, trying to catch his breath. His ears were ringing.

"Dean!" Marie shouted, scrambling to him and lifting his chin. A cough rattled through her. "Spencer," she called out to him, another cough shaking her. "He's not breathing."

Spencer rolled to his side and gasped, his stomach and his shoulder on fire.

Marie laid Dean onto his back as she nearly choked on her own breaths. "Dean," she wheezed. "Dean, open your eyes," she patted his cheeks.

"Marie," Spencer croaked, turning to them. "Dean?" His blurry vision caught her last gasping inhale as she tumbled to the water. "No—" Crawling up to them, Spencer saw Dean's face as it started to turn blue. Marie lay next to him, her breathing calm. Moving quickly, Spencer broke the connection between them and dropped in beside Dean, starting mouth to mouth.

Marie groaned and her eyes fluttered open.

"He's not breathing," Spencer said to her, in between breaths.

"What?" She rolled up, holding her head. Looking over to them her face fell. She immediately looked to her hands in the dim light. "Oh, fuck."

Spencer's attention snapped up at that. "Dean?"

"Kid, keep breathing!" Dean said to him, jumping up and shaking out her wrists. "_This_ is surreal. This is really goddamn surreal."

"Is there anything you can do to fix this?" Spencer asked him.

"What the hell do I look li—don't answer that. Okay, okay, okay," he said, racking her brain. "Um," he crouched down and touched his chest. "This is gonna hurt like a son of a bitch," he said, squeezing her eyes shut and feeling a shock of electricity pass through her as a blast of bright light flashed throughout the forest. Dean's body jolted up and it wheezed in a lungful of air. Marie squealed, the flesh on her palm singed. "Owowow," he said, dunking her hand into the cool water.

"Dean, are you okay?"

"My hand smells like hibachi, how is that okay?-!" He barked, the usual gruffness of his voice lost in her teenaged femininity. "Get me out of this water before I catch pneumonia," he said, moving to his ankles as Spencer gripped Dean's body from under the arms. "Seriously?" He huffed. "I miss three months of hunting and somehow I gained fifty pounds?"

"Dean, you're a fifteen year old, five foot three inch girl who is probably not even a hundred pounds," Spencer said, fighting with his pain to lift Dean.

He arched her brow. "Point taken," he said as they laid out his body on the opposite bank. Spencer collapsed against a tree completely winded.

"How you feeling, kid?" Dean asked, looking over to Spencer who was still pretty pale and worn out.

"It feels so weird being called that by you looking like that."

"Get over it. Talk to me."

"I don't know. Tired. I just need to catch my breath—"

"It came from over here!" They heard voices from somewhere beyond the trees.

Dean looked to Spencer and then to his body and knew that if they stayed there they were all dead. He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the Colt. "Wet ammo makes for a _seriously_ unhappy gun," he said, handing it to Spencer. Taking the Demon-Killing Knife from his boot sheath he also handed it to the kid. He looked to Spencer and knew what he had to do. He'd almost watched him die and he wouldn't go through that again. His mind was made up. Fate was forcing him to make a choice and now that he and Marie weren't two separate people anymore, the choice was easy to make. "I want you to stay here until Sam or Derek find you, got it?"

"Wait, what?"

"I'm gonna lead them away, they're after me—"

"They're after Marie, Dean."

"There's no untying this knot once it's made, kid. You know that." He grinned to Spencer and clucked him under his chin. "There is no Dana, only Zuul," he said before taking off towards the sounds of the searchers.

"Wha—"

"Ghostbusters," Dean said over her shoulder before disappearing into the thick.

"Dean—" Spencer called out, but she was gone.

* * *

He ran through the trees, her Wellington's flopping over the soil, her nightgown a foot deep in mud and dirt. He was soaking wet and breathing hard, the pain from Sam's botched healing still digging through her. At almost every tree she passed he snapped a twig here and a branch there, making as much noise in the quiet dark as possible, drawing what was left of the search party towards her and not to Spencer and his body.

Breaking through the trees to cross a dirt road she leapt over a bunch of bushes, lantern light passing down the lane.

"Marie!" She heard a familiar voice behind her. Dean turned to see Kitty hiding in the bushes just a few feet from her. He hesitated, fear clutching his gut. "What the devil is going on?" She whispered. "Everyone's gone mad, I barely made it out of the house. René is . . . Marie, he's not _human_."

The fear passed over him and he went to his big sister and held her shoulders. "Kitty. I need you to find Sam and Derek—"

"The angels?"

"Er, yeah, they're camped out," Dean went through Marie's memories, "under that old mango tree we scratched Eugène's name into."

"How do you—"

"I can't explain right now but you have to find them and take them to Spencer. He's hurt out by Allier stream."

"But, what about you? Marie, René is after _you_," Kitty was beyond terrified.

"I know. Don't worry about me, just go get help."

Hooves were closing up behind them, the light from a lantern brightening the path. Dean knew he couldn't go in Kitty's direction or back towards Spencer. To save them, he'd have to stand his ground. "Go on."

Kitty suddenly understood what her sister was saying. Wrapping her arms around her she whispered, "Oh little one, please be careful."

Okay, Dean thought, she wasn't a completely heinous bitc—the light engulfed them and Dean pushed Kitty away as he ran to the road. He stood before a red roan with Noémi Pénélope Dubois atop it, a musket under one arm, a cast iron lantern in the other, her eyes solid black in the lamp light.

"Sun's down," Dean said, looking up to the soulless black eyes. "Guess you don't have to worry about freckles."

"I've got her!" The demon inside of Noémi called and soon Dean found himself surrounded by riders.

"All this for me? You make a girl feel so special." He was grabbed from the back of her nightgown and hauled up across the back of a horse. "Get the hell off of me, ugly!" She kicked and bit and fought the entire way back to La Bonne Mère.

* * *

"Help! Help, oh God, help!" Kitty screamed, holding her side as she broke through the small makeshift camp. Derek and Sam, who were contemplating the last hour that Dean and Spencer had spent alone and away from camp and whether they should go call them, jumped up to see Kitty head right for them.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Sam asked, not happy to see her at all.

"Spencer's hurt and they have Marie and my brother, my brother, he's wrong, he's so wrong, I think, no, I know he's possessed!" She said all in one breath.

"Wait, _where's_ Reid?" Derek demanded.

Sam took her by the shoulders. "What do you mean '_possessed_?'"

* * *

Aeshma relaxed in the comfortable skin of René Étienne Dubois. Years of breeding and converging blood made that vessel almost just right. He would still burn away in three days but he would hold up better than all the last. Soon a vessel would be born that would contain him completely. This work was tiresome.

The master suite which had belonged to his faithful servant was spacious and comfortable. Aeshma, as king of all demons, had felt Théophile's passing and recognized that the son had now inherited all that had been the father's. He was master now and everything belonging to the elder now was property of the younger.

He could hear the shouts of the riders from below and he went to the window to look down at all the activity. A garrison of demons had taken position at La Bonne Mère and nothing would interrupt him this time. The Paraclete was his. He saw her, kicking and scratching and screaming obscenities and he smiled. He always appreciated . . . _fire_.

Dean's voice was screeched raw but he had the stamina of a teen girl so he kept on fighting until he was brought to the threshold of the master suite and bodily thrown into the room, landing face first against Aeshma's feet. The flesh burned her skin and she jumped back, touching her chin.

"Damn it," he quietly said, his eyes on the granite floor. Burning skin? Dean looked up and saw the eyes of the seraphim, masked by René's dull blue. "You."

Aeshma frowned and bent close to her, searching her eyes, dipping into her soul. "Oh," he said, his exhalation reeking of sulfur. "You. Of course it would be. Are you on a quest? Will we meet again?"

"Not if I can help it," Dean said, rising to her feet.

"You're always inserting yourself in my affairs. Are you the final incarnation? Are you from the end of time?"

"Is this an interrogation?"

"You don't like to talk? Straight to business, then? How mercenary."

Dean shivered, knowing what _business_ meant. The thing in front of him, the man and the creature inside of him, was his great grand father five or six times over. _Bloodlines_. How else did it make sense that Dean and Sam could hold Michael and Lucifer? How else did it make sense that Cas was attached to Jimmy Novak's line? People and angels making it like rabbits over the course of human history.

"You know, I had this entire thing planned from the moment we found the signs leading to her birth. I learned from last time. Scaring her, chasing her, it only wastes my own time. She gets so much stronger over the years, as the end approaches. Not half as easy as it had been. I endeavored to make all of this pleasant for her. I gave instructions to make her a favorite, an equal; all I wanted in return was for her to bare my children."

"You're not exactly worth dinner and a movie, bud."

Aeshma frowned before letting out a dark laugh. "Her first night was supposed to be _beautiful_, comfortable . . . well, as comfortable as I could make it," he said, gripping Dean's arm and burning a red mark into it, his face leaning in close to hers, the heat radiating off of him almost unbearable. "Now, all you have to do is survive," he let out a throaty laugh.

Dean hissed against the pain but almost immediately straightened his back and shot Aeshma a withering glare. He narrowed his gaze and gave him a smooth grin. "So, you can see my soul?"

"Naturally."

"Can you tell where it's been?"

Seemingly confused for a moment, Aeshma looked deep into Dean's green eyes, down into his soul, reading the eternity of marks there. There was a dark chapter within it, forty years long. Aeshma drew as much as he could from it before he pulled away in disgust.

"That's forty years of Hell, asshole." Dean looked him up and down, emasculating him with every flutter of her lashes and every second that passed. "I wasn't just sent down there 'cause I was a bad _bad_ person," she grinned. "I had something your Chief Inquisitor wanted _so_ badly but even after decades of torture, he couldn't get it out of me." She tapped his cheek, "How _frustrated_ do you think that made him? What _don't_ you think he did to get it out of me?" Taking a deep breath Dean shrugged and smiled. "Sweetheart, there's nothing you can do to me that I haven't done." She leaned in close to his ear and bit, "Or did."

Aeshma pulled back from her and raged to the light sound of Dean's nervous, giddy laughs which soon became screams.

* * *

Daylight broke out over Saint-Domingue and Dean felt the warm sun against her bleeding and broken skin. She was twisted in the bed sheets and the smell of blood and smoke was thick on the air. He could barely open her eyes as they were swelling shut but what she _could_ see was the shadowy figure of Aeshma in René's body at the foot of the bed. Patches of his bare skin were starting to peel off.

"I would like to stay but the usefulness of this vessel is necessary, you do understand?" He said, turned away from her. "There will be more children from this union."

Dean could only groan, consciousness fading.

Aeshma released his hold on the body and René lifelessly fell back against the bed. The moment he was gone, Castiel and Sam appeared in the room. Sam's eyes went wide at the scene before him, the red splatters and destruction. If he could be nauseous he would have vomited right then. Castiel immediately went to Dean and touched her forehead, making her whole again. The room was cleansed and spotless.

Dean's eyes slowly opened and she found herself staring up into Cas' ever-resolute gaze. But there was something under it, something more. A sadness.

"Cas?" He said, thinking it was a dream, thinking he was asleep and dreaming and grateful that it was so real.

"Dean—" Cas began when Dean's arms wrapped around him, holding onto him like a vice. Cas sat against the bed, holding her as she clutched onto him, soul-rattling sobs quaking through her small frame.

Sam just watched them, an entire night of impotent rage culminating in watching his brother fall apart in Cas' arms. And he couldn't help but feel like it was all his fault.

Minutes passed before Dean's tears dried and she wiped her face, his capacity for embarrassment returning. He was glad he was wearing Marie's skin for that breakdown or he'd never forgive himself.

"Wow, they're right. Their hormones _are_ insane."

"Dean, it's alright—" Cas began.

Dean shook her head, "No, it's not. Okay? This never happened."

Cas nodded and repeated, "It never happened."

Wiping his face again, Dean pointed to the nightgown that had lain in shreds just a few hours ago. Now it was as pristine as the day it was made. Dean tossed it over his head and pushed away from the bed. Her legs shook and Sam was by his side in a moment but Dean shivered and pulled away from him.

"I can walk."

"Dean—"

"I can walk, Sam," Dean said, not looking him in the eyes. "I hope you guys have been boiling that nasty soup while I was stuck in here 'cause even though I'm the smallest, I'm not exactly _this_ small."

"We've been preparing it," Castiel said. It had been the only thing they _could_ do in the interim.

"Good. I want my body back," Dean absently nodded, blankly looking around the room, her eyes purposely never hitting on René. "And I'm hungry. Apparently I'm gonna be a mom now, do cravings start this early?" He tried to laugh but his voice shook and broke. She slid her feet back into her Wellingtons. "We have to go." He went to the side table and grabbed a glass vase that was there.

"Dean?"

She lifted it and smashed it across the floor.

"Dean!"

She stepped into the glass, eyeing the shards before reaching down and grabbing a large piece.

Sam grabbed her wrist, "What are you doing?"

"Try to remember the story, Sam," Dean said, pushing away from him. "Cas was right, we can't change history. I'm just working inside my limitations." She finally turned to René and trembled. Taking a breath, Aeshma's words went through his mind. _'I would like to stay but the usefulness of this vessel is necessary, you do understand?'_

"I understand," she mumbled before sawing away everything that made René Étienne Dubois a man. Blood covering her hands, she threw down the broken glass. "We can go now," he said before spinning and retching.

* * *

Spencer stood looking out over the unconscious bodies of what was left over from Aeshma's demon garrison. As soon as Cas had returned from requesting his audience with the Elders he managed to wipe out all the demons within reach before he got too close to Aeshma's power. It was there, just outside of La Bonne Mère, that they waited, all night, before Cas and Sam felt their power return. Through the quiet countryside they could hear Dean's screams. Spencer's nails were bitten to the quick when Cas and Sam finally vanished just after dawn. His thumbnail was bleeding.

It was almost twenty minutes later that they saw them emerge from the house, Dean shuffling forward in Marie's skin, her small figure stark against Sam and Castiel's. Everyone rushed to them but Dean kept his head down and just bee-lined to Spencer, taking his hand in hers.

"We need to talk," she said, moving past everyone.

"Are you—?"

"Stupid question," Dean said, leading him away where they could be out of earshot.

Spencer felt his heart sink, "I guess."

"You're rational, in theory, right?"

"Yes?"

"When I was faced with the option of letting Michael in my skin or fighting back, when you read that at first, was my choice the most rational?"

"Not at all."

"Was it right?"

"Absolutely."

"When we ended up in India, you tell me how the hell Sara and Mani would have survived without us there."

"I . . . I don't know. They must've—"

"Spencer, think about this very carefully. If we never came here at this point in time, what would our future look like?"

Spencer made all the requisite maps in his mind and went through everything he knew. Their coming had actually been the catalyst of everything they'd come to think of as 'history.' "Dean, are you saying—?"

"We're _making_ this happen. That's why Chuck sent us here."

It all crashed down on him at once. "A self-fulfilling prophecy?"

"We have decisions to make and if we don't make the right ones our whole future changes. Good or bad, we don't know, but we have to do what's _right_. Right? Chuck would want us to do what's _right_ not what makes the most sense or what's easiest."

"As our future is, compared with a possible worst case scenario, yes, I think its best." Spencer turned to look back to the group. "Why didn't you want to say this in front of the others?"

Dean clenched his fists and circled her arms across her chest. "Because of what Sara said. Sam's the only one of us that has to make a choice and that's _it_ for us, for all of us. What he says—"

"Destroys us or transforms us," Spencer said, understanding what Dean was suggesting. The implication was critical. "You don't think he'll make the right choice if it's not the most rational one?"

Dean looked to his brother from some distance away and shook his head. "No. I don't."

* * *

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	16. The Family That Hunts Together

**Chapter Sixteen**

**The family that hunts together**

_London__, 1888_

Apple pie.

_Holy shit._

Dean glanced down his nose to the pastry that was thrust a bare inch from his face. It smelled like heaven rolled in sugar-coated sunbeams. Frowning, he looked over to the tan arms holding the warm pie and to the bright and beaming smile of a woman who was about his age, maybe a little older, it was hard to say, with glossy dark brown hair and . . . bright green eyes.

"Welcome!" She said, taking his hand and placing the pie in it as she spun around in the small, narrow little alleyway, a bustle almost too big for her frame bouncing around behind her. She rummaged into a basket that was being held by a very tall, muscularly broad man, running about the same age but with a fading tan over a ruddy complexion. He looked over to the group with an apologetic smile and a small roll of his eyes: eyes that were a dark, blue-green hazel and unmistakable.

The woman pulled out the longest loaf of bread ever and a bottle of wine.

"There's a sort of Parisian-styled café around the corner but _terrible_ food. I'm positive the owner is from Chiswick, but the area isn't too smoky and we can sit down and have a little breakfast and talk as long as we order _something_ and he's hard up for money seeing as he can't cook to save his life so I bought this bottle and reserved a table for us. I want to hear everything, absolutely everything!" She almost handed the bottle of wine to Spencer before looking him over and humming in a matronly reproachful way. She thought better of it and gave the wine to Derek and the loaf of bread to Spencer.

"But—" Spencer began. Spinning past them she went to Sam and planted her hands to the sides of his face and squished, looking into his eyes.

"Entirely fascinating," she said.

Lips pushed together in a duck-pout, Sam looked down into Dean's eyes.

Still holding Sam she looked over her shoulder to the man who was clasping the basket, "I honestly didn't think you _could_ get taller my love."

The man got even redder under his tan and sighed. "Nini, onto the café now, yes?"

"Oh yes," she said, releasing Sam and smiling brightly again. Shuffling over to Spencer once more she interlocked his arm in hers and led the way out of the alley. "So, darling, you mustn't leave anything out you know. Not a _single_ thing."

"Bu—"

"Introductions are mere formality at this junction, yes? I know you, you know me so let's chat. I want to know _everything_ about you."

Dean, pie in hand, turned to the man with the basket. "What just happened?"

David Campbell looked to the young man who stared at him from behind his wife's eyes and sighed. "You're pregnant."

Spencer almost broke his neck spinning his head around as Nishtha walked him forward and the remaining group of time travelers' eyebrows went up. There was a long, uneasy pause.

Dean closed his eyes in a roll and nodded. "It never rains."

David looked between them, sensing something was off and asked, "Is something the matter?"

"No," Dean quickly answered, a false smile plastered on his face. "Nothing." He held up the pie, "Smells great."

Their great-great-something-something wasn't at all convinced and they could see it. Sam stared at him, curiously, openly. When David looked over to catch his gaze there was an immediate sinking feeling curling inside of him. Cas immediately turned Sam's face away.

"He's human," Cas quietly said to his apprentice. The meaning behind the simple words was clear. Injured or not, the soul would escape the weaker body. That would be the mortal one. Sam and David shook their heads from ten feet apart.

Dean looked between them and said, "I guess you two are talking to each other's eyebrows from this point on."

"Come along then," Nishtha called from the mouth of the alley, still holding onto Spencer.

Derek, wine bottle in hand, walked alongside Dean and muttered, "It stopped being weird yet?"

"I just found out I'm pregnant with my kid cousin who was my husband two lifetimes ago. I won't even get into the fact that I'm currently married to and pregnant by my brother. Now I'm wondering if me being a guy wasn't some weird genetic accident. Explain _that_ to my girlfriend. It'll stop being weird when I'm dead."

Derek sighed with a grin, "When you put it that way."

Dean snorted. It was real and very near a laugh. "I'm just happy the emotions don't come with the memories."

"Hmm?"

"Marie had the biggest, girliest crush on you."

Derek's face blanched. Dean nodded, "Yep. Still weird."

Sam, Cas and David walked behind the others. Sam asked, "How did you know where we'd be? And when?"

"We were told. There is a lot to talk about and she's halfway past impatient to get it all out."

Sam nodded. "All of this runs in her family but you're not really . . ."

"Taken back by it?" He asked with a laugh. "My family has hunted the sídhe for generations. I'm aware of the supernatural. When she found me—"

"_She_ found you?"

"She's a bit of a force of nature, if you've noticed." Sam looked ahead to Nishtha and then to Dean and just nodded. "I landed in India in the middle of monsoon season with my unit to head up to Afghanistan, last hurrah before the end of it all you know, when this girl besieges me with what sounds _completely_ insane. I'm about to tell her to go find help for whatever damage she's got when burning ash and sulfur hits the air." Dean's ears perked up and the group all looked to David. "A fire in all that rain? Not bloody likely. There's a panic and she just grabs onto me and tells me to run."

"Aeshma?" Spencer asked, glancing to the woman at his arm and then back to Dean. Dean's face was unreadable.

"You got away?" Spencer asked.

"We sent him back," David replied.

The entire group looked at him in shock.

"How did you do it?" Castiel turned on him, tension spreading throughout his body.

"I can't imagine how none of my family's writings survived to your generation," David said, almost incredulously.

"We weren't exactly looking up on how to hunt fairies," Dean said.

David shook his head. "The _Daoine Sídhe_ is just a name the fallen chose for themselves when they created their pantheon in these lands."

"Fallen _angels_?" Sam asked.

"You wouldn't believe how many beliefs are based on _'gods'_ who fell from grace. Pretty much anything that demands a human sacrifice should be looked upon with suspicion," David replied. "Honestly, there's nothing to banishing the lesser ones if you have the right tools and supplies."

"Like?"

"Jerusalem holy oil is a temporary cure but there's a limited supply and I didn't think I would be hunting the fallen in Afghanistan."

They walked out onto the busy London street. It was fall and a chill was curling though the air. London, like any other metropolis, had its good areas, its better areas, its worse areas and places you wouldn't walk through in the middle of the day without a police phalanx surrounding you. The group of seven walked along the sidewalk of one of the better areas of town.

"How did you banish Aeshma?" Sam asked.

"A few _many_ steps up from holy oil and something that was just a legend in my family. A rite, a ritual that would take three people standing in a triquetra, the Trinitarian symbol, each representing an aspect of the human whole: the mind, body, and spirit."

Derek frowned, "Trinitarian symbol? Like father, son, holy ghost?"

"Specifically the Holy Ghost. The Paraclete. Consoler, intercessor, comforter, advocate." David glanced to Dean and then looked forward towards his wife. "We," he said gesturing to himself and Sam and then to Spencer, "bookend her journey. Johannine literature discusses her role. She'll defend mankind until she is too overwhelmed to continue. Then she'll open the first seal to the apocalypse."

Dean looked away from everyone; he didn't want to know that their eyes were on him. They were.

"_As he breaks, so shall it break_," Spencer whispered, repeating Alistair's words, glancing over to a still smiling Nishtha and then to Dean who was definitely _not_ smiling.

"After that, we make the final decision," David said, looking to Sam. Sam frowned at him, not understanding.

Spencer asked, "Who was your third?"

"A very old woman, just past ninety. She'd come along with Nini. She'd come to Bombay before I did and she's the one who told Nini how to find me and she told her that you would all be here on this day in that very spot."

"How did she—" Spencer began before he understood. The Second Afghan war ended in 1880. Minus ninety years from that and the woman would have to have been born around 1790. "Jean Louise." He said, very quietly.

"I'd known her only by reputation. Vampire hunter. Historic. She'd wiped out most breeds of vampire before I was even born."

"Breeds?" Dean asked, trying to find his voice.

"The only ones left now are the rabid type, shark-like teeth. A breed of nightwalker. She'd annihilated the entire race of daywalkers some years ago."

"Daywalking vampires?" Derek asked, shocked.

"Skin like stone embedded with diamond. Ice-cold to the touch. Practically impervious but you can smash them if you're strong enough. They shatter. They were easiest to find seeing as they shimmer in bright daylight."

"Wait . . . those things were _real_?" Dean asked. "_Sparkle vampires_?"

"You've heard of them?"

"In tween novels."

David frowned, "Tween?"

"Never mind."

"Ah. Well, it's not unlikely to find lore hidden in novels. An Irish friend of mine who works out of the Lyceum is thinking of writing a book about another vampire breed and his facts are coming around to some kind of accuracy. He keeps coming to Nini for resource materials you know. The library and all. I believe the title is hovering over either _Tepes_ or _Dracul_. He's not decided as of yet."

Cas huffed at the distraction and looked intently to David. "So Nishtha and Jean Louise find you and you all complete the circle?"

"They'd laid a trap for him. They'd had the ritual set up already, they just needed me. I went along because it was obvious he was a fallen and very high up in the hierarchy. Nothing my family had ever faced before, despite all preparations. It shocked me to find the circle made and that they knew the details of the rite. Jean Louise only replied that it was a paradox. I didn't understand her meaning."

Spencer nodded as the group turned a corner and a small café came into view. "We're going to New Orleans after this. This entire trip is a cycle."

Sam frowned at him and then looked to Dean. "What?"

"We'll talk about it later," Dean said.

David continued, "So, we hide as he stalks by until he hits the center circle of the triquetra. We sealed the connection and he was trapped. Standing on the three corners we generated the energy we needed and ignited the rain."

Spencer blinked. "You lit the _water_ on fire?"

"Sealed by the three of us—" David began.

Castiel seemed to understand everything in that moment. "Being each of you an aspect of—"

"God . . ." Spencer said, less as a completion of the sentence and more in shock.

Sam nodded in amazement, "The water became consecrated and like the holy oil, had complete control over him."

"Lake of fire," Dean said.

One down. One to go.

"He burned. We would have destroyed him right there but it was too much for Jean Louise," David said, a sadness crossing his features. "He was banished for the generation but she . . ."

Dean nodded, not sure what he was feeling. The child that had been conceived just a few hours ago had died at the age of ninety, destroying the creature that was also her father. His daughter, his ancestress, his cousin. He looked over to Nishtha who stepped into the café through the door being held open for her by Spencer and glanced for the briefest moment to her still flat stomach and said, his son . . . This weird, beautiful, horrible family portrait was ever-twisting and never-ending.

"We're on strict instructions," Nishtha said, gesturing to a large booth encouraging everyone to sit. "To teach you the ritual." David emptied the rest of the contents of the basket onto the table and Nishtha pointed to the barkeep and held up seven fingers.

"You know, you're not supposed to drink when you're pregnant," Spencer said, his lip quirked.

"Really?" She asked, concerned. "I'll trust just about anything from your mouth," she said before turning to the bartender holding up six fingers and pointing over his shoulder to a set of bottled water. The barkeep came over with six glasses for the wine the Campbell's had previously bought and greeted them with an atrociously bad fake French accent. Nishtha arched her brow and looked to the company with a, 'see what I mean?' look. Derek had to catch himself from laughing. The bartender went back to his post. The entire café was barren.

"And, we're on even stricter instruction to have you rest and stay the night," David said, opening the bottle.

"We don't have ti—" Sam began when Nini smiled.

"Time travelers who have no time?"

He frowned and thought about it a moment. She was right. Besides, it did make sense to take a night to rest, to take a break from traveling. They'd been on the job for too long and it was evident from those that still required sleep that they needed it. And Dean . . . Sam wasn't sure if Dean needed rest or if he just wanted to keep going and power through what happened, effectively ignoring it as long as he could. He'd always been hard to read.

Dean stared down to the pie that was fixed before him on the table and he inhaled slowly before saying, "I'd give the family jewels for a bed right now."

The decision was made. They'd take a night off. They all needed it.

"Wonderful," David said, passing around the glasses. "Tomorrow is Lord Mayor's Day and we both have off," he said, pouring water for his wife.

"Lord Mayor's Day?" Derek asked.

"Oh, a holiday. It's a parade, a pageant of sorts. The Mayor of the city will make his way to the Royal Courts of Justice and pledge allegiance to the Queen."

"Queen _Victoria_?" Derek asked, a smile painted on his lips. Living history and living _in_ history were two separate and appreciable things.

"Would you like to attend?" Nini asked, excitement twinkling in her eyes. "You'd have ever so much fun."

Sleep and a parade? Dean was already there.

"Wait . . ." Spencer said, his gaze growing wide. "When I chose today I didn't even realize . . ."

"Spencer?" Dean asked. "What's up?"

Spencer looked to Derek and said very carefully. "Tomorrow is Lord Mayor's Day. November 9th 1888."

It took Derek half a second to recall the date that had been burned in his memory from the first day he'd taken a profiling class, Jason Gideon making sure every one of his students knew the exact date and the exact time.

"Oh my God."

Dean raised his hand, "Share with the class?"

Spencer and Derek were locked into their own separate conversation. "He's going to be there. Between tonight and tomorrow morning. We can find him."

"Kid, do you have any idea what the hell this means?"

"We'll know who he is."

"Think we have a chance of saving her?" Derek asked.

Spencer considered that for a moment before realizing the situation and its similarity to what had just happened. If they got involved, would it change anything? If it did, would it change anything for the better? Twisting fate and history, would their involvement help or ultimately harm? Thinking back to Dean's words just a few hours ago he had to come to terms with the fact that all he could do was do as he always did: save people, hunt things. They would try; Heaven help them that it was a good idea.

"Save who?" Dean demanded.

Spencer looked to Dean. Morgan just rubbed his hands together as if fighting off a sudden chill and said, "Mary."

"Wha—"

The light went off in Sam's mind next. "Holy—"

"Mary who?" Dean asked.

"Mary Kelly." Spencer replied before looking to David and Nini. Something changed in their look. Nini wasn't smiling as much as before. "Did Jean Louise tell you?"

"She couldn't say too much—" David began.

Spencer nodded, "She'd collapse the paradox."

"But she said you'd help us with what we were working on. This is the only case we're on right now. We thought you'd at least have a day or two before—"

"I kinda hate being the only one who doesn't know what's going on," Dean said, tossing back his drink, knowing by everyone's looks that he'd need it. There wasn't going to be much rest had that night, that was certain.

"Wait, you work cases?" Spencer asked. He looked to Nishtha. "I thought you were a schoolteacher."

"I was in India. I taught demon hunting."

Another horse-riding, bow and arrow wielding Amazon. Dean sighed, "Why did I picture kindergarten?"

David shrugged, "She gets that a lot."

"But how is this a case?" Sam asked. "You work mundane cases?"

"This isn't. It's definitely supernatural."

"Are you telling me he's a—"

With a nod David said, "Demon. Definitely. Sulfur at all the scenes."

Everyone but Sam, Cas and Dean went pale. Sam didn't because he couldn't. Cas and Dean didn't because they both had no idea what was going on.

"And voilà, Dean suddenly understands what you're all talking about. Or you know, not," Dean groused.

David turned to him and said, "They used to call him the Whitechapel Murderer but now we know him as—"

That finally sent alarm bells ringing through Dean's brain and he exhaled. "Awesome." Everyone was silent.

Dean suddenly reached over and took a fork from the table. Spinning the pie in its pan like a top he clutched it and started to dig right into the middle of it, swallowing huge hunks of it whole. Nini grinned, reaching over and plucking a fork as well. She plopped down next to him and munched along with him.

Everyone else watched them in shock.

"You made this?" He asked her, his mouth full.

"Well, we have a cook," she said over a large piece.

"Fucking excellent."

"Dean . . . what . . .?" Sam began.

Swallowing a little, Dean looked up to his brother and to the rest and said very decidedly, "You all seriously think I'm gonna go chasing after _Demon Jack the Ripper_ without eating the pie first?"

More than one mouth fell open.

Cheeks distended, they both garbled, "What?"

* * *

The Campbell residence was situated at the northwest end of Hanover Square, in Westminster. Walking towards the house from the opposite end of the square, their party elicited many curious and some displeased glances from the local residents.

"Did it just get colder out here?" Dean mumbled, looking to the stuffy people passing by on early morning visits.

An older couple walked towards them, warm smiles on their faces as they approached. Dean was almost glad to not see a hostile face until Nini muttered, "Good lord."

"Captain, Mrs. Campbell, out early are you?" The man in the tall top hat asked, a black wool frock coat draped over his wide and somewhat plump shoulders. He had a barbell mustache in a grey-spotted brown and wore years of good cooking under his belt. He seemed genuinely jovial.

"General Tilney," David said with a nod. "We are in fact. Retrieved some visitors off the morning ferry."

"Visitors," the lady next to the General said and though her voice sounded interested and happy, it was tinged around the corners with slight disdain, particularly when she looked toward Morgan. The look didn't escape Derek and he just arched a brow at her, keeping his face neutral.

"Family," Nini corrected. "Dear Lady Tilney, you must say hello to my dearest, sweetest cousin Derek," she said, giving Derek a small affectionate squeeze before presenting him to the woman. "I do hope you'll show him all the same courtesy you've shown to me all these years."

"Cousin?" Lady Tilney said, looking between Derek and Nishtha. Nini just nodded and quite vigorously too.

"He's an officer."

"Of what force?" General Tilney asked with much pleased approbation.

Derek had to rack his brain for a moment before he got a predecessor to the FBI, "United States Secret Service Division, sir."

"But . . . how . . ." Lady Tilney began, finding it hard to wrap her brain around facts and keep up her pretense of civility.

Derek kept the cool and easy look on his face and replied, "The Service was commissioned by President Lincoln at the end of the Civil War, ma'am. That's how."

Dean muttered a whip snap under his breath.

Lady Tilney, quite flustered, looked to Nishtha, "I didn't know you had any family, my dear."

"Oh, it's _quite_ a reunion." She gestured to Spencer, "This is my other cousin, Spencer."

The Lady looked between Derek and Spencer and narrowed her eyes, "Which side of the family . . ."

"The same," Derek and Spencer said at the same time, both wickedly enjoying the moment.

"You can't possibly be—"

Derek patted Reid on the back, "I know. He looks just like our mother. I take after dad."

Lady Tilney looked like she'd swallowed a frog.

Nishtha turned to Castiel and said to David, "Darling?"

"Oh yes, of course. General, this is my elder brother, Castiel."

"By jove!" General Tilney said with excitement, "You never even mentioned him."

"He's taken his orders and lives out on the family estate in Newcastle. He's a lonely, quiet sort."

"A parson," General Tilney gave a respectful bow. "We will have to visit later. Lady Tilney can play nearly all the Stainer-Bramley carols on the pianoforte."

"I enjoy their _Good King Wenceslas_," Cas solemnly replied. Dean arched a brow at him.

Tilney leaned in close with a nod, "Genius. Absolutely."

"And my younger brother, Samuel."

"Of course, of course! Cannot be mistaken. He has your figure and your eyes. How are you young man?" The General said to Sam with a smile.

"Um, good, uh, _very well_, sir," Sam said.

"New to society I see. Still shy. Let the town wake him up, Campbell," the General ordered with a laugh. "Castiel, David and Samuel. Church-going people your parents were young Campbell!"

"And you, sir." Lady Tilney said, looking to Dean who had been avoiding her gaze.

"Oh, and yes," Nini said, taking Dean's arm in hers. "General Tilney, Lady Tilney, my—," she looked to Dean and gave a small arch of her brow before saying, "My twin brother, Dean."

It was probably not at all lady-like for the older woman's mouth to hang almost to the floor. She looked between the tan and dark Nishtha and then to the freckled and blonde Dean and shook her head ever so slightly. "That's not—" she began before gasping, seeing their eyes. It was like looking at the exact same person.

Dean looked to Nini and had to bite hard on his inside lip. She seemed to be having the same difficulty in keeping her countenance.

"We'll be going out later in the evening, perhaps to a show, but you must try and come for dinner," David said, tipping his hat to his neighbors.

"What a number of shows you have occasion to see, young man," the General said with a laugh, "Your nights are positively entertained!" Waving good-bye to the party, they made their way across the square.

"How on Earth—" Lady Tilney began when the group was out of earshot.

"A right set of chaps, wouldn't you say my dear?" The General asked, his round cheeks red with amusement.

"_Whatever_ shall I do with you?" Lady Tilney replied, exasperated, before pulling her husband forward.

Still being held by Nini, Dean looked to her and then over his shoulder to the retreating older couple. "You're terrible."

"Oh, forgive me," Nini pouted with a gleam in her eye. "The old battleaxe has been nothing but awful to me ever since I came here. I can deal with people being hostile to my face but—"

Derek nodded in agreement from a few steps in front. "Yep. She's worse."

"You still invited them to dinner," Dean said to Nini and then to David.

"Well, the General has the sweetest heart. I can't help the fact that marriage seems to be a package deal," she said with a shrug. "Challenging her assumptions was essential and _ridiculously_ fun."

"Uh huh, except I'm not _really_ your brother."

"No, you're really _me_," she said with a serene and authoritative smile. "Which counts for more, yes?"

Dean hummed, refusing to give that one to her despite its being completely logical and true.

"Uh huh," she said, triumphantly.

Dean let out a low whistle as they approached No. 20 Hanover Square. The row house was a five-story baroque affair in dark brick with cream-colored trim. The second floor windows were taller than the rest and the travelers had to arch their necks to see the attic dormers. Spencer had been the only one of them that had ever had a house growing up and this flabbergasted him. He could only imagine what Dean and Sam were thinking. Spencer looked to Derek. He knew Morgan had two in the same style in Georgetown, if not somewhat narrower.

"Nice," Derek said appreciatively, some awe in his voice.

"We can have lunch at the Oriental Club," David gestured towards Tenterden Street to No 18.

Spencer frowned, looking to Nini, "Isn't that a gentlemen's club?"

Dean's eyebrows shot up.

Sam shook his head, "Not like that, you perv."

"Men only," Spencer clarified to Dean.

"Well, that's stupid."

"David knows I usually take a nap around lunch time. You boys will have fun." She looked over the group as the butler opened the door. "We will have to dress you."

Spencer, Dean, Sam, Cas and Derek all looked down to their clothes. "Oh," they all seemed to chime.

"We've been going pretty well so far," Sam said.

"You haven't been in Victoria's London, so far," Nini replied, leading the way into the expansive foyer. "You can't possibly go to the Oriental in that." She said, removing her bonnet and handing it to the maid who met them. "You look like a bricklayer. Besides, there's a tie policy."

Sam looked to himself and then to David. She was right. 21st century 'nice' was nowhere near 19th century 'nice.'

"But, how are we going to find clothes on such short notice?" Sam asked.

"It's only short notice for you. We knew you were coming." Nini looked to the butler, "This is Wentworth. He'll take you to your rooms. Your baths are drawn and Jean Louise was _very_ clear on your measurements. You have some hours before lunch and I really would like to talk to you all but I understand if you want to rest." She turned to the maid and nodded before turning back to the travelers, David beside her. "We'll check on you all in an hour?"

They nodded.

She turned to Spencer, "Oh, and a list of what I should and shouldn't do in my condition would be most helpful."

"Well," Spencer said, uneasily. "Hunting might be the first thing on your _don't_ list."

She thoughtfully hummed and then suggested, "Can't we just start with food?"

Spencer sighed. She beamed, kissing him on the cheek and then she and David made their way up the stairs. Wentworth followed and the travelers were close behind him.

* * *

"I feel very . . . odd," Castiel said, standing before a mirror in the shared ante-room of a set of apartments in No. 20 Hanover Square. He stood before his reflection in a brown tweed Norfolk jacket with matching tweed trousers. On his head was a matching deerstalker hat. Under the jacket he wore a dress shirt with the collar pressed into wings and a silk Ascot. A diamond pin set the Ascot in place.

Spencer, fidgeting with his four-in-hand, glanced over to him and shrugged. He was used to suits, he was even used to older styled suits but this . . . "Hmm," he hummed. "I look like Oscar Wilde." He was in a double-breasted navy suit-jacket of 8-wale corduroy. His pants were in a subdued navy and black pinstripe. There was a gardenia in his lapel and a black wool bowler in his hands. The tie over the bright white dress shirt was a simple black. The waistcoat was in a jacquard satin of dark blues with fine gold embroidery. A gold pocket watch was settled into the waistcoat pocket attached to a large gold chain. Spencer suspected it was real gold.

Derek spun a 360 in place and tipped his grey wool top hat with a smile. "I'm not complaining." In a long grey frock coat and matching trousers, Derek looked over himself in a separate mirror. His double-breasted waistcoat was in dark Italian silk brocade and the matching tie was a very narrow bow. On his hands were grey gloves and in his possession was a bronze mermaid-handled mahogany cane with a brass tip. His shirt was white and grey pinstripe.

Samuel leaned against the window pane and shook his head with a smile. He was in a three-piece lounge-suit of a light camel-colored wool. His high-necked waistcoat broke open to a burgundy Ascot over a white shirt. An amber pin held the Ascot. Atop his head was a matching sixpence cap. "Cas?" Sam called out to his mentor.

"Yes?"

"Can you say, 'Elementary, my dear Watson?'"

Cas frowned. Derek chuckled.

Spencer glanced up from his shiny black leather shoes and said, very seriously, "That's actually a misattributed quote. In none of the sixty Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan . . ." he trailed off as everyone but Cas gave him a smirking look. "And that was a joke that went completely over my head." He nodded. "Okay."

Dean shuffled out of his room in a . . . bath robe. His hair was still wet and his skin was pink from apparent rough handling as if he'd been trying to scrub away something that wouldn't rinse off. Under the robe was a set of dark green silk pajamas. He looked around at everyone and smiled, "Hello Halloween."

No one else matched his smile.

Sam leaned away from the pane. "You're staying?"

"Yeah, well, seems like a dick move to just leave Nini here alone . . . granted, houseful of maids and all but still. And I'm beat."

"But—" Sam began when Spencer spoke over him,

"Want us to bring you back something, if they let us? I mean, I guess we could sneak something out too."

Dean glanced to Spencer, pure gratitude flashing past his eyes for a moment before they went neutral again. "Hell, I don't even know what they've got. Nah, I'm okay."

Those words fell over the room like a pall.

"And, I mean, we've got a long night in front of us, right? Demon serial killer." He seemed to be justifying things to himself. He took a breath. "Yeah, okay, so, I'm gonna go take some quality time with myself." He grinned. "Yeah, that sounded less wrong in my head." He turned and shuffled in silk slippers out of the main door of the apartment.

Derek hesitated for a moment before heading out the door and following him. Sam moved to do the same when Spencer reached out and took hold of him. "Not yet, Sammy."

Sam spun on him and narrowed his eyes. "You two are—"

"Yes, we are. Keeping things. I know. I don't want to but it's his call. He'll tell you when he's ready."

"Spencer, this is a _really_ big deal and he's in the middle of some kind of breakdown—"

"He doesn't want to drink brandy and smoke cigars for one afternoon. I wouldn't qualify that as a _breakdown_. I study breakdowns on a daily basis. Trust me on that."

"How can he _not_ be after what happened to him last night?"

Spencer took a breath and felt his hands shake a little before he simply and quietly said, "He's been through worse."

That quieted Sam almost completely. When Dean had come back from Hell he was . . . destroyed. He'd tried to hide it but bit by bit the stone wall he tried to present chipped away. Sam had only gotten some true insight the day before and a hundred years prior on that road to their fateful meeting with Marie. To go through everything Sam's imagination was now supplying in graphic detail, only to come back to the land of the living and be expected to save the world from the end of it—and through all of it having to deal with all the headaches Sam brought into the equation with Ruby and the demon blood and the fracturing of the only thing Dean ever knew as a stable and constant thing?

"Tell me?" Sam asked.

Spencer closed his eyes and nodded. He knew it would follow. He disappeared into his room and came out a moment later with his bag. Reaching inside he pulled out the iPad. "I can't tell you," he said, handing Sam the device. "It's in there."

Sam took it and it felt as heavy as the whole world.

* * *

"Dean," Derek called, moving up behind him. "You've got one hell of a game face but man, I do _not_ want to give back the advice you gave me."

Leaning his head back to stare up at the ceiling Dean sighed. "Okay, lemme just relate this before all of you try to psychoanalyze me, okay?"

"Make me understand. Go ahead."

Dean thought about it for a minute before asking, "When you were a kid, you ever skinned your knee?"

Derek smirked a little before giving an obvious, "Yeah?"

"You cry?"

"Pretty sure. I think that's a given."

"I mean, the first time out, first skinned knee, how do you think it went down?"

"Pain plus blood equaled screaming and lots of it."

"Okay. Now, take babies. Nine months just getting everything they want. Warm, fed, blah blah. Right?"

"Sure."

"They come out, first empty stomach walks along and what happens?"

"More screaming."

"Okay. So, have you gotten banged up recently?"

"Nearly every case."

"Went hungry for a couple of hours?"

Derek was getting his point and he sighed, "Yep. Nearly every case."

"You go around screaming?"

With a shake of his head Derek said, "Nope."

Dean shrugged. "There you go. You gotta learn to deal with it. I have. That's not saying being hungry now doesn't hurt. That's not saying getting banged up now doesn't hurt but you've learned to deal with it. I'm dealing with it."

Derek frowned and then quietly asked, "Are you?"

"If I wasn't, I'd be dressed and ready."

And it clicked. Derek snuffed and nodded with a small curl of his lips. Something else came to him just then and he asked Dean before he got set to keep moving down the hall. "That advice you gave me. That wasn't a pep talk was it? You weren't telling me everything was gonna be okay or get better, were you?"

Dean looked down to the floor and shook his head just a little.

Morgan let out a harsh breath. "You were teaching me to deal with it."

"Like it or not you're a hunter now. It's not gonna get easier, you're just gonna have to learn to stop screaming." Dean gave him a small nod and headed down the corridor.

Derek stood there forcing his limbs to stop from trembling.

* * *

The group of young men entered the Oriental Club that bright, crisp November afternoon, David being a member paying a per-body fee for allowance of the rest. Their host led them up towards the main dining room. They received several 'hellos' from acquaintances of Captain Campbell and they were stopped for introductions enough that by the time they reached the dining room, Derek and Spencer were having fond memories of the huge baguette Nini had welcomed them with that morning.

"And you must try the ragout—" David said when a tall, dark-haired young man, around the same age, perhaps younger, came up to him with a bright smile on his face. "Eric? Old boy it can't be!" David asserted, gripping the youth's hand in a friendly shake. "When did you get back?"

Spencer was struck for a moment by the resemblance to—he looked to Sam and read it clearly in his face. He was shaken, rocked to his core and Spencer could see his mind try to make sense of it and failing over and over and over again. Looking to Cas he also saw it, stark and plain. Something was wrong. Something was _seriously_ wrong with this.

He was . . .

"Oh, I must introduce you to everyone," David said, gesturing to the group. "Sam, Spencer, Derek, Cas, this is Eric, my absolute most favored friend who has just deigned to return to us from the subcontinent, but you must forgive him his lofty nature allowing to his pleasing address."

"You are one for introductions, Captain Campbell. You can't even give my name properly," the youth replied with a laugh.

David held up his hands in surrender, "Forgive me, forgive me, everyone, pleased to introduce the incorrigible Lieutenant John Eric Winchester."

Yes. Spencer said to himself. This definitely counted as _seriously_ _wrong_.

* * *

He plucked the thin cheroot from her fingers a second before she lit it. She frowned up at him like a Dickensian street urchin, a long cedar splint still burning between her fingers.

"Your kid will have five heads and no toes," he said very simply to her before tossing the cheroot into the fire.

Nini grimaced and tossed the splint in after it. "There are so many rules I don't know. However did you all figure it out?"

"The wobbly five-headed babies was a clue," he smirked.

"Terrible thing to leave up to trial and error," she replied. Wearing a simple white nightgown covered over with an open light-green tea gown, Nini flopped onto her bed and patted next to her. Without hesitation, pretense or awkwardness, Dean flopped in beside her. "Why didn't you go with them?" She asked him.

"Tired."

"Half true."

He arched a brow at her and asked, "Why not all true?"

"Because I'm pregnant."

"Intuition?"

She laughed. "I'm a woman; that covers the gamut. No, I mean, pregnancy is a parasitical experience. Our soul should have clawed its way out of my eyes by now." She rolled her head to him and took his hand. "Which means, on some level, you're hurting too much to make it a consideration."

He sighed. "I can't give this to you."

Reaching up, she touched the side of his face and he closed his eyes. "There's only one person in this room right now. Don't think of it as you giving it to me. It's already mine. I can see that in your eyes."

He kept them closed.

She whispered, "Prepare us for it, Dean. This might be our only chance."

"But it—" He sighed. No, it didn't already happen, not for her, not for the soul that would occupy his body next. When Nini died, her next memory would be his earliest one.

Opening his eyes, he turned to her and they stared at one another. The scars of the elder strengthening the foundations of the younger. Generations from then people would wonder what it was that made Dean Winchester equal parts iron and fire. He would only be able to answer that ninety years before he was born as he lay side by side with himself setting up the barricades he would need to live the life he would eventually lead.

"Why's this feel like cheating?" He breathlessly asked as they broke the connection.

Wiping tears from her eyes, Nini breathed, "Until you find the rulebook, this isn't cheating."

* * *

"Excuse us," Castiel said to the group as he took a stunned Sam by the arm and spun him around and out of the dining room. "You have to go, _now_," he ground out.

"Cas . . . Cas, that was—"

"Get Dean and find someplace to hide. I'll come for you when I can."

Sam's face twisted in incomprehension and the purest expression of shock and disgust crossed his features. "Our dad—"

"Sam, listen to me. Go. _That_ is not your father. If he senses what's inside of you—"

Dawning, gnawing realization passed over Sam's face and he understood. "Oh God—"

"Move!" Cas urgently and silently ordered, giving him a final push into an unoccupied room. Sam blinked once, then twice and then vanished.

"Dean!" Sam called out from the foot of the stairs in No. 20. He called out again, even louder when he heard racing footsteps from above. Dean and Nini appeared at the railing. "We gotta go."

"Wha—"

Sam ran his fingers through his hair and thoughts and words and images flashed through his mind as his brain tried to evaluate anything, everything before he just exhaled, "It's Michael."

* * *

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	17. Burn After Reading

**Chapter Seventeen**

**Burn after reading**

"The hell d'you mean _it's Michael_?-!" Dean demanded from just over the railing.

"Oh," Nini said, color flushing to her cheeks. "She never said the very first day would be _quite_ so active."

They both looked to her. Sam was by their sides in an instant. "You know? I mean, you know _what_ he is?"

"Yes," she said with a single nod. Then she hedged, "But . . . well . . . it's a long story but to kind of cut it short, he doesn't know who _we_ really are. Jean Louise made us promise not to tell him even though it was a secret she said he'd find out eventually. I suppose now is as good a time as any for him to find out." She gave them both an awkward smile and partially coy shrug. They didn't reciprocate. She sighed and huffed, "Long story, then?"

Dean glanced to Sam, "We're talking _the_ Michael? Big brother douche-nozzle _Michael_?"

Sam could only nod, not knowing how to relate the, if it was even possible, even bigger news to his brother. He wasn't sure he completely understood what was going on himself. Michael the Archangel was there in 1888 wearing the skin of a 20-something year old John Winchester. It was their father and so young it had to be before he deployed to Vietnam. How did this make any sense? Had Michael used their father's skin before they'd even met him? Did he do all sorts of things inside of him, using the space of a second in real time to travel the world and history? Sam was taken back by how possible that really was; how much sense that made. The angels had gone on and on about 'true' vessels but they'd made it clear that was a formality. As long as it followed the bloodline, anyone was fair game. Whoever had been Gabriel's host had apparently lived hundreds of years all the way back to the Norse age. Who was to say that if Gabriel had survived and grown tired of his body that he couldn't have gone back in time to the point when he first entered him and just handed him back over to whatever family he'd been taken from? Granted, Gabriel's host would likely have been a vegetable by then but Michael did say he was different. Whoever he took would be returned to normal once he left and they had seen it. When he'd taken over their dad the night Anna tried to kill their parents, Michael left him so whole and his memory so clean, that their dad hadn't even known anything had happened.

Going through all of this in his mind just settled him on one fact that this left a considerable gap in time. Their dad would have to be born first, in the future, before he could be occupied by Michael to come back to this point in time. What Spencer said before tickled an uneasy part of him that their entire trip was one large temporal cycle. Was their dad a part of it?

Dean stared at Sam, seeing something was wrong. Before he could ask, Sam said, "He's like, best friends with David."

"What? What the hell kind of angle is he playing here?"

"No," Nini said, holding out a hand and placing it on Dean's arm. "It's not like that. That part is true. They are friends. Michael has been a part of David's family for generations." That staggered them both. Generations? "He's the Campbell family genius."

"Screw that," Dean said. "Spencer's the Campbell family genius."

"Dean," Sam said as even more worry and confusion ate at his expression. "It's another word for guardian angel."

"Say what?"

"Come," Nini said, gesturing to them and then heading to another set of staircases and they followed up two more flights to the fourth floor landing. She turned down a short corridor that ended with a set of double doors. Opening them Nini led them into the shared Veritas-Campbell library. Moving to a shelf she spoke, "There are only a few hunting families that go back to the beginning. The Campbells are one such, of course, not having gone by _Campbell_ the entire time. My family is a different sort, tracing the souls, not the bloodline and as a result we were never detected by those who didn't know what to look for but David's family, from their origins in Sudan, have always been known to Heaven. As such, they have a family genius attached to them."

"The way we have Cas?" Dean asked.

Nini's brows scrunched at that. "I'm not sure what happens in your time, but you are all still Campbells and hunters. Michael should be your genius as well. It's a covenant tied to the angel and the bloodline. He's assigned to protect you. He can't shirk that duty for anything." She pulled a book from the glass encased shelf. "He can never harm or desert you."

They both didn't expect that. How was that possible? What did that even mean? They had interacted with Michael; they knew what he had done, what he'd allowed to happen. That didn't jive with what Nini was saying.

"The genius is assigned by seniority. The older the family—"

"The older the angel," Sam said, thinking about that. The Campbells must have been hunters since the fall of the angels to have Michael as a guardian. It begged the question, just who was their ancestor? Of course, everyone can trace their origins to two people if everything Biblical is to be taken literally, but the way the angels went on about he and Dean being from the line of Cain and Abel, they made it sound like they were as direct descendants as could be. It never made any sense to him. Wouldn't there be billions of people descended from them? Adam and Eve didn't exactly have a few hundred thousand kids.

No. Sam pondered that even more. No, they didn't. The only explanation would be the bloodline. The strength of the bloodline. But even still . . . with all the convoluted demon involvement that still left their brother Adam, a Winchester. For all the demon involvement in their own lives, Adam had gone through his life as invisible as anything from the hands that turned the wheels. Adam was Michael's true vessel. Their dad, being the source of that bloodline, made it able for Lucifer to inhabit him and made it possible for Michael to inhabit Dean. What was it about their dad that made _them_, and not the entire other half of humanity who would have been descendants of Cain and Abel, have the capability to be Michael and Lucifer's vessels?

What was it about dad that made his blood stronger than the rest?

"So the Campbells have been hunters, literally since—" Dean began.

Nini opened the book and on the first page was an illustration of a young man in long robes being raised into the sky. All around him were symbols written in—

"Is that blood?" Dean asked.

"Enochian sigils. Enoch was the first hunter. He lived three hundred and sixty five years before he gave himself to the service of Heaven."

"Gave himself . . ." Dean began when it clicked. He exhaled, looking to the image again and understanding. "He became a vessel."

Nini nodded, "The first vessel. People believed he'd been assumed but he wasn't. Angels had no purchase on Earth but the chthonic elements, never having allegiance to Heaven, could corrupt man."

"Chthonic?" Dean asked.

Sam nodded, "Earth-based demons. They aren't all former humans. Certain creatures were never human at all."

"Like?"

"The djinn, the original vampires, the original werewolves, shapeshifters—" Sam began.

"Skinwalkers, leprechauns, wendigos, sirens, rawheads, daevas—" Nini continued.

"Shtrigas, rakshasas, changelings, rugarus, dragons, wraiths—"

Dean held up his hand to stop the onslaught, "Okay, okay! Earth-based nasties; got it."

Nini went on, "Yes, and the fallen made ties with the chthonic demons to build vessels for themselves. Half human, half demon hybrids—"

"Antichrists," Dean supplied.

She nodded, "The race of the Nephilim. They allowed the first of the fallen to walk Earth with enormous powers. Humans and angels are prohibited from having children."

Frowning, Dean looked to Nini and Sam and asked, "Do we count as—"

"Oh, no. A demonically possessed mother is required to produce Nephilim. Aeshma could never last long enough in a body to bring a child to term."

He exhaled at that. He wasn't even sure why that calmed him. The fact still remained that fallen angel DNA existed all up and down his family tree. He hummed, "So that's why the Ten Commandments started with a big ole 'no other gods need apply.'"

"Pretty much," Sam said.

"What about angel vessels?" Dean asked. "If humans and angels aren't supposed to have kids—"

"When an angel occupies a vessel they leave a permanent blood marker. The marker follows the vessel's blood line. A few of my ancestors were targets by Aeshma and so they carry the mark. That means I have it, you have it—"

"Jean Louise has it," Dean said quietly.

"It was strong with her," Nini said, thinking back to that meeting so many years ago with the woman who would one day be her son. "He was her father and so she had enormous gifts."

"Yeah," Dean muttered. "Her dad was a real peach."

They both looked to him and he rolled his eyes.

"Um," Sam began. "So David has Michael's marker?"

"No, oh no. Michael took Enoch after he had all of his children."

The boys weren't understanding.

"Let's take this slow—so the Campbell family is descended from Enoch's line?" Dean asked.

"Yes."

"Main point: weren't there like five people on Earth then? Never mind the flood that wiped out four of the five. Wouldn't _everyone_ be descended from that line?"

"Not everyone became hunters," she reminded him.

"I think Dean means," Sam began, "if the Campbells don't have Michael's marker what makes it possible that—"

As they asked, Nini was flipping through the book, showing the same young man that had given his body up to the service of Heaven through a veritable pictorial history of the ancient world, each picture evolving in style as time evolved with it. The details of his face became finer and more representative.

"Wait, is this all Enoch?" Dean asked. Thousands of years had passed in a few page flips. They were up to the fifteenth century and were looking at a stylized Masaccio painting depicting a young man with dark hair and dark green eyes that seemed half-way between Dean and Sam's.

"It's Michael," Nini said of the image in profile.

Sam leaned over closer and he saw it. It hit him and hard. The truth was cold and bitter in his throat. _That's_ why. He had his answer.

Dean hummed, "No wonder they thought he was assumed." He still hadn't recognized him.

"It was like that in those days. Men lived so long and aged very slowly so they could do battle with the demons for hundreds of years but when it became too much for them to handle alone, they gave their consent. Enoch's son, Methuselah, he gave himself over to Gabriel after nine hundred and sixty-nine years of battle."

"Dean, I have to tell you something—" Sam began, needing to get the truth out of his mouth before Dean saw it for himself. He didn't know how Dean would react to it but he knew it had to come from him and not from a painting.

Nini turned the page and they both openly stared at an original da Vinci sketch of the same young man but now his details were almost photographically clear and resonant. The sepia lines couldn't be mistaken. He had Dean's nose and Sam's enigmatic smile.

"Dad?" Dean choked. Shaking his head ever so slightly he turned to Sam and saw the confirmation there. Nini glanced up at that and stared between the two of them.

No . . . the Winchesters had been from Lawrence, Kansas since the town's settling. They'd been bookkeepers and accountants the same way police and firefighters passed down their careers to their children. His dad had broken the big calculator-toting mold by becoming a mechanic. He was a mechanic. He wasn't a vessel. He _hadn't been_ a vessel since the dawn of time. That wasn't the truth. That wasn't right. John E. Winchester hadn't been the first hunter in the history of mankind. He was . . . he was . . . he wasn't a goddamn suit Michael could just wear to tea!

Dean slammed his fist onto the table and didn't even register the pain blooming up from his split knuckles as they began to bleed onto the marquetry surface. He stood very still for a long while.

"Dean," Sam began quietly. "We have to go."

"I'm not running." His voice was cold and hollow.

With a tone of pleading in his voice, Sam said, "He'll kill me."

And with that Dean let out a laugh. It was a deep, genuine and honest belly laugh.

Sam put on his best bitch-face and said, "Dean?"

Still chuckling, Dean said, "He can't!" Breathing hard he had to lean over the table to keep standing. "Nini just said so. He has to _protect_ us. We're under a covenant." Dean added with a bitter little flourish and spirit fingers, "We're _Campbells_."

Sam's mouth opened slightly, "But—"

Dean pointed to him, still rattling with laughter, "And the demons knew it! That's why they wanted you to be their Hell prince! That's why Yellow-Eyes gave you his blood. They get Lucy in you and Michael can't touch you!" Dean's face was very near tomato red.

"But he went into Adam, he was gonna fight, Dean."

Dean sighed with a nonchalant little shrug, "Yeah, maybe."

"What do you mean _maybe_?"

Dean tapped the portrait book. "Sam, we just found out dad's been Michael and Michael's been dad since the sun settled on yellow. Nini just told us he can't touch us. We pretty much know that whole _last battle_ scene in the graveyard was for shit since you popped out like twenty minutes later."

"What are you saying?"

Dean took a breath and calmed himself, standing up. "I'm saying—" He turned to Nini and extended his hand, "Feel like crashing a party?"

She took his hand with a sly grin, "Me in the boy's club? How shocking."

Sam rounded on them, "Dean. This is _Michael_."

"Sam. This is me not giving a fuck."

* * *

"What's going on?" Derek quietly asked Spencer.

"I have no idea," Reid replied in a good amount of unhidden surprise. "I mean," he began in an attempt to clarify. "That's my uncle John."

That wasn't at all what Morgan had expected to hear when he saw the reactions from Sam and Cas. "Like great-great uncle of my grandfather _uncle_?"

"Like Sammy and Dean's dad."

"Say again?"

David, his previous mirth gone, turned to his friend again and said, "I had no idea you'd be here."

"I felt something arrive this morning. I had to cut my trip short."

When Castiel arrived a second later and without Sam, David seemed to visually deflate. "And now everyone's blood's up. Come along, I think we'd do best for a private room. We have some things to sort out."

Cas, his eyes locked on the newcomer, shook his head and was about to reply in the negative when the young lieutenant replied, "I think that would be the only thing for it." Looking to Cas he said, "My brother has a _lot_ to explain."

Reid and Morgan glanced to each other and mouthed, 'brother?'

Castiel inclined his head in a gesture of ascent and said, "I think we both do."

"Cas," Spencer said from his side, "What's—"

"Spencer, Derek," Cas said, gesturing to the visitor. "This is my elder brother, Michael."

Reid's eyes widened to the point where they took up most of his face. Derek quickly ran through facts and a moment later it felt like a freight train had missed him by a centimeter. "The . . ." he didn't think he could even finish.

David nodded and said, "The archangel. We really should get that room." He held up his hand and called over a waiter.

Cas looked to David in surprise. "You knew him for what he was?"

David spoke quietly to a waiter who nodded and gestured the party forward. "Yes, he's—"

"I think," Michael cut in, "I'd like Castiel to answer a few questions before we divulge anything more."

Cas frowned at that and then spoke again to David, "He doesn't—"

"No, not yet, though I think that's a situation about to presently resolve itself." Double doors opened onto a fairly large room though small by club-standards with a good-sized fireplace and a long white-linened table, beautifully dressed. David gave the waiter a general prix-fixe order and he left the company to themselves.

David looked to Cas and Michael. Both seemed to be engaged in a practice that would pry secrets from each other's brains with just enough staring.

"Why are you here?" Michael broke the silence.

"An assignment."

"Who gave it to you?"

Cas hesitated for a moment. He wasn't inclined to lie but the truth might have done more harm than good. Could he really lie to his brother about their own father? Never mind the metaphysical implications inherent in lying about God.

"Father."

That seemed to do something to Michael's entire being. The way he held himself, the way he moved seemed to sharpen. He went up close to Castiel and studied his eyes very carefully. They were impossibly close, nearly nose to nose.

"Cas?" Spencer began as if to offer his support but he was lost as to what he could possibly do in the face of Michael.

"It's alright," Cas said. "He's reading my age."

"That's not right," Michael said, narrowing his gaze. "It begins in a hundred years?"

"A false start," Cas replied.

"There is no false start to Armageddon."

"The demons—"

"Demons," Michael seemed to scoff.

"The Elders—" That seemed to get Michael's attention. "Aeshma."

"What are you saying?"

"And you." With that solitary accusation, the room felt like it had been tossed from a British November to a Solar July, the air getting too thick and heavy to breathe. Michael stepped back from Cas and the room returned to normal.

"We're going," Michael said to David.

"Leaving already?" A woman's voice called out from the side of the fireplace. The group looked over to Dean, Sam and Nini standing there. "And David goes on and on about the food."

Dean glanced to Michael and had to stop himself from openly staring at him. There was no mistake; it was the body of their father.

Michael's eyes seemed to immediately track to Sam and his look narrowed. "You're . . . _not_ what I felt this morning but . . . there's something . . ." A moment later his expression iced over.

Cas looked over to Dean and Sam, his gaze wide and terrified.

"Hmm. Definitely a _what the hell are you two idiots still doing here_, look," Dean said with a deep breath.

Michael raised his hand and a moment later he was across the room, his palm pressed against Sam's shoulder just as Castiel screamed, "No!" Half a second later Sam's eyes went wide and his skin became translucent as orange light erupted from within him. Flames engulfed Sam and a collective scream ran through almost everyone. Dean felt his heart skip for a beat before he told himself it was going to be alright, that it had to be. He pumped his fists for a moment as smoke filled the air. Sam stood there, covered in fire but he was . . . fine. The flames soon died away. Sam, saving for a large blackened scorch mark at the base of his feet, was untouched. His suit was still pristine.

"Wow, I'm so glad I was right about that," Dean said with a gleeful whoop in his voice. Sam stared at him like he'd just swallowed an elephant, butt first.

Michael was shocked into stillness by that.

Sam scrambled away from him, moving behind Dean in an echo of years past when he was still a child and Dean would be there to protect him from all things scary.

"You're a Campbell?" Michael said, his voice hollow. "My brother is walking the Earth in a Campbell?"

"Dean," Sam gasped from behind his brother. "You were right."

"Second point," Dean began, looking to Michael, "Since this trip is already something that happened—what the hell'd you call it again, kid?"

"Um . . ." Spencer breathed, still taking in what he'd just witnessed. "Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey. . . _stuff_."

"Yeah, that. That means you already met us before you met us in the future. Which also means," Dean stared at the archangel. "You've been playing us since jump."

"What is going on?" Michael demanded.

Dean held out his hand and Nini pulled out the iPad Sam had asked her to hold in her bag. She handed it to him.

"I saw toddlers on YouTube figure this thing out. Here," Dean said, trusting his instincts and extending the device to Michael.

"What—" Michael began before Dean just impatiently sighed. Narrowing his eyes at him, Michael took the device and fiddled with it for a half a second before the screen came on. "Give me a moment," he said before he vanished. Before anyone could react to his absence, he was back and his entire demeanor had changed, yet again. He was almost . . . serene.

"Of course," he said, relaxing against the chimneypiece. "It makes sense."

The group of travelers looked to each other before Dean said, "Great . . . now explain it 'cause we've got no idea what the hell it all means. I mean, dude, you could have ended _all_ this in Heaven. Why didn't you?"

The doors opened and a set of three waiters entered with trays of food. They all paused upon seeing Nishtha. David smiled to them and held up a ten pound note. They all grinned to him and nodded, setting up the lunch service. The lead waiter, a man of Sikh decent, took the bill and bowed to the lady before leaving with the others.

Nini went to her husband and wrapped her arms around his waist and said, "Darling, your skills at bribery would make any wife feel proud."

He kissed her forehead.

Michael watched the exchange, seemingly in a new light.

"When did you first suspect the truth?" He asked Dean.

"Back in '78 if we're telling the truth," Dean said, glancing to the food like a starving man. Sam looked at his brother with surprise. Cas looked at him much the same.

Michael grinned. "How?"

"Telling me everything you knew would make me run in the opposite direction. _Free will's an illusion_? Fuck that reverse psychology bullshit."

"More like cognitive dissonance," Spencer quietly chimed.

"At first I thought you were right but it rubbed me the wrong way. You knew every button to push and you stomped them all. Then I figured you were a goddamn nutter like the rest of them and hell yeah I had a choice. After talking to Chuck and realizing we _do_ have choices and we make them, you were solidly in the nutter corner."

"Then?"

"Then, nothing. Now. Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey. You're part of the story now and you've _been_ a part of it."

Sam finally got it. "Full circle."

Dean put his hand on the archangel's shoulder and repeated back the words Michael had said to him all those years from then, "You can't fight city hall."

Nini took a hold of Spencer and Derek and said, "Now can we hash out the rest of this over a little food like a normal family?"

Cas sighed, glancing to his older brother and grunted, "When have we ever been a normal family?" They sat down at the table and began to eat their lunch.

Michael placed the iPad on the table before Reid. He stared at him a moment, Michael's eyes making Spencer feel awkward and self-conscious and then repeated Dean's question, "Why? The simplest answer I can deduce at the moment is to see how far the Elders have fallen and decide what to do about them."

Dean shook his head, his mouth filled with curry and rice. "Bad answer. No way in hell is our entire messed up lives gonna be because of some long-assed sting operation."

Michael nodded. "Then the complex answer would be: all of this happened to you and Sam for a reason. Instead of a happy childhood and an easy life, instead of being a stock broker as Zachariah showed you," he said to Dean, "or becoming a lawyer as you wished to be," he said to Sam, "you _needed_ to be hunters for an alternative purpose. Something completely separate from the workings of Heaven."

Sam scrunched his brow, "What would require that of our lives? Why would we _need_ to be hunters?"

Michael again looked to Spencer and then simply gestured to him. Spencer Reid choked on his okra tempura. Derek shoved a glass of water at him.

"What?-!" Dean demanded.

"Independent of Heaven, Spencer is Aeshma's vessel. It's clear that under his orders the demons designed to release Lucifer to face him in open combat. Under his orders they targeted Sam. It's evident that I allowed this to happen because if you two weren't hunters, you couldn't help Spencer in this current situation and it's likely Lucifer would have been defeated in his previous vessel's body. The only solution I would have in all of this would be to destroy Spencer—"

Dean went pale at the suggestion a moment before he closed his eyes and leaned his head, muttering, "Which you can't do."

"Exactly. He's a Campbell. My hands, in the entire situation, would have been tied."

"Possible worst case scenario," Spencer mumbled, repeating himself from that morning almost a hundred years ago. "Aeshma takes over Earth using me to do it."

"If that happens," Cas said, "angels wouldn't have any purchase on Earth any longer."

Derek looked between them all and said, "Are we talking a literal Hell on Earth?"

Michael nodded, "Yes."

"But," Spencer began, not feeling as hungry as he thought he'd been. "He'd still need my consent. I'd never give that—"

"You could have been a very different man than you are today if you'd been left alone, Spencer."

"What—" Reid began before it came to him and he inhaled sharply. "Oh," he said, his breath heavy in his throat. "Oh," he said again, shaking his head.

"Spencer?" Sam called to him from across the table.

Barely above a whisper Spencer said, "That was His angle."

It took Dean a moment to understand before his face set in a hard mask. Spencer's Doc Shurley. Chuck. That's why He'd been so hands-on with him. That's why He appeared just days after Spencer had lost his father. He was that steady hand that guided him away from the abyss but He could only be a steady hand. Spencer would have to make his own choices and that's where Dean and Sam entered the picture.

Michael looked to Dean and Sam and said, "It's possible that you've already saved him. It's not likely that he'll make that choice. He's seen too much of what Aeshma is and what he's done." Michael looked to Spencer. "Am I right?"

Spencer looked at him with a destroyed expression. He shook his head ever so slightly and barely managed to say, "Of course not." Oh God no. Not after everything he'd seen. Not after what that thing had done to Dean . . . He suddenly felt very sick. Where Sam had accepted Lucifer with a plan in mind, not for _anything_ would he ever allow that thing to come near him. Dean looked between them and couldn't help but wonder for the smallest moment if what happened to him last night wasn't part of the warning to Spencer. He shoved that thought away. Did any of it matter if it was if in the end it had been his choice?

Nothing had changed. Reasons and motivations may have come to light but in the end they had been born hunters to save the world.

Dean swallowed hard and nodded. "Okay. So. We're collecting our tools to deal with Lucifer and apparently, _somehow_, I'll deal with Aeshma. What we can't do are the throne angels. Since they're about a billion times stronger than you, how are you gonna 'decide what to do about them'?" He asked, quoting Michael's words.

Michael leaned back in his chair and smiled at Dean with a little narrowing of his eyes.

"It makes me feel a _little_ uncomfortable with you giving me the sexy eyes with my dad's body," Dean said with a cross look.

David frowned when Nini tapped his hand and hushed him before he could ask for clarification.

"It's just that, you've gotten a lot of it right so far, Dean but this is perhaps too obvious."

"What is?" Dean barked.

Michael looked to Spencer and said, "You're good with facts?"

"Um—"

"What does lore say about me?"

"Oh, um," Spencer flushed. He looked to the group before frowning and looking slightly away to sort through his information. "The Archangel Michael is the first being in existence after God. He is the general of the armies of Heaven, his name with its theophory literally means 'Who is like God?' which by implication means that _no one_, nothing, is like God. He's known as a healer and a saint of chivalry. He guided the Israelites through the desert. Michael is the Charon, the psychopomp, of souls. This ties into the Roman Catholic belief that he's the angel of . . ." Spencer looked up, understanding. Michael gave him a small nod.

"The psycho-what?" Dean asked.

"Wait . . ." Sam began, remembering something from some book he read a while ago but it wasn't formulating in his mind.

"And what does the lore say about Enoch?" Michael asked.

"Enoch? But why—"

David gestured to Michael and said to Spencer, "His vessel is Enoch."

"Ancestor of Noah, Enoch?" Spencer asked, all of it forming and congealing. That was the final bit of information he needed. It was right here. It was all right in front of him. Michael gave him another nod.

"Um," Spencer began again, his voice softer than before. "Most of what we know about the Archangel Michael is from the Book of Enoch—"

Dean huffed, "Convenient."

"During his time on Earth he battled . . ." Spencer looked to Sam and Dean with apology in his face before he said, "the demon Azazel."

Dean bit down on his teeth and his jaw tightened. Sam looked like he wanted to punch something in the face.

Spencer continued, "After his ascension—"

"Mmm hmm," Dean groused.

Spencer said, his voice breaking a little, "He became Metatron."

That threw a silence about the small eating room. Castiel looked to his brother and his eyes seemed absolutely terrified.

Dean went through all of that and he suddenly reached over and gripped the iPad, hitting the dictionary. "Charon: ferryman of the dead?" Dean glanced up to Michael and frowned. Turning back to the screen he searched again. "Psychopomp. . . . reaper." When Dean looked up again, his face didn't hold half the irritation. It had been replaced by uncertainty and some fear. He glanced down to the screen and searched again. "Metatron: Chief of _all_ the Angels." Dean set the tablet down. Reaper . . . second most powerful creature next to God . . . oldest creature next to God. Either he had a twin brother or . . .

Michael spoke to them all but his eyes never dropped from Dean's. "Didn't you think it was suspect that a being who claimed to be as powerful, or even stronger than God, had been locked away by God? That for as powerful as he claimed to be, he could still be controlled by Lucifer with the sacrifice of a few souls? It is a very large universe. Things die every second of every day. You never wondered why he was the only one who was helping you? Why the other horsemen were positively gleeful in comparison?"

"You—"

"Apparently had to put on some theater for your benefit."

"Reid?" Derek said to Spencer, his voice low.

Michael sighed. "You, Spencer and your brother keep coming back. You're an affront to the balance of the universe, and you cause disruption on a global scale. Before this trip you honestly never wondered why."

"Reid?" Derek demanded a little harsher, needing to understand what was going on.

Spencer's voice was like sand when he exhaled, "He's Death."

Michael held out his right hand and turned around a silver band that was on his ring finger. A square setting appeared and embedded in it was a white stone. Dean let out a harsh breath and slowly reached into his pocket revealing a piece of jewelry he hadn't been without since Sam fell into the pit. It was an identical silver band set with a white stone.

"_That's_ what I felt this morning."

"_You_ pulled Sam out of the pit?"

"It seems that way."

No one spoke for a while.

Dean finally managed to ask, "And Adam?"

Michael leaned back again and said, "I suppose I gave him what he wanted. An afterlife with his mother. I couldn't be absolutely sure for another hundred years though."

Dean shook his head, "So everything you said was a lie?"

"Not everything, though I wonder how He'll forgive me for saying that I'd reap Him."

"The Elders?"

"I'll deal with them."

"Aeshma?"

"You'll deal with him."

"Lucifer?"

Michael turned to Sam. "That is up to you."

Sam frowned before straightening his back and echoing, "I'll deal with him." Michael looked like he wasn't sure he fully believed him. Sam faltered for a second. His spine steeled and he repeated, "I said I'll deal with him."

Michael spoke to Dean and Spencer, "You need to talk to him. Everything you've been occupied with: Aeshma and the Elders and the demons doesn't compare to the choice he may have to make if you fail to end the Apocalypse. Beyond all of this you are still what you all are. In that, you three must realize you're far more powerful than you can currently imagine. If one of you falls—"

"He's fine," Dean said, ending all debate.

Sam lowered his head and looked to the table, hating the fact that Dean had to defend him and hating the fact that he couldn't defend himself.

Dean gave Michael a sideways look and asked, "So, our dad?"

Very seriously the archangel said both to he and Sam, "He truly was the greatest warrior against the darkness humanity has _ever_ known . . . and it looks like he will be again."

Dean felt a tickling behind his eyes and Sam had to look away for a moment, only nodding.

Michael looked to the ring and said, "Keep that safe. I will come for it when we see each other again."

Putting the ring back in his pocket, Dean nodded.

Rising from the table, Michael said, "I have to go speak to Joshua."

"The angel?" Spencer asked. "The one who talks to God?"

Michael smiled, "Joshua doesn't _talk_ to God, He _is_ the Word of God." Turning to David and Nini, he said his goodbyes to his dear friends as Spencer looked like all the blood in his body had escaped through his toes. Castiel also shared the same expression but without the ashen look.

"Reid?" Derek called out to him.

"Cas?" Dean called.

Sam looked like he'd been mowed.

"Joshua . . . _Yehoshua_," Spencer mumbled.

"Huh—" Dean began.

"The Word of God. To _be_ the Word of God. Dean, when we died and met Him in the garden . . . that was Jesus."

"What the fu—"

Nini kicked him from under the table.

"Castiel?" Michael said, calling his brother over to the window. Castiel followed, having trouble catching his eyes. "Oh don't do that. Nothing's changed. Not really."

"I don't think that's true. Everything has."

"Your mission hasn't."

Cas couldn't argue that.

"The audience you requested with the Elders?"

"I told them that Aeshma was in play and that they needed to accept Dean's assistance. They said they would reach me after they considered my argument."

Michael sighed. "If they've fallen to the point as to encourage this business, when they call you do not, under any circumstance, go."

"But—"

"It will only take them one moment to travel through history to create vessels for themselves. They will do it if you give them anymore information. Do you understand me?"

Castiel hadn't considered that. He was still so new to the art of deception that it never occurred to him. He assumed they would take the help inherent in Dean but Dean was still human and they resented that.

"I understand." He then asked, "When will you—"

"I can't disturb this path you are all on. When you return from your travels, I will be there to take care of them."

"And if they come back for me here?"

"Keep Spencer and Dean away from them and utilize Sam. If they destroy him they'll release Lucifer and they know it. He has the strength inside of him required to deal with them."

"Alright. I will." Cas assented. "I—" he began, just as it seemed Michael was about to disappear. "I wanted to know, why you assigned this post to me. I wasn't an archangel and most of the lore about you I didn't even believe was true and it was. I didn't even know the truth about Joshua. I knew absolutely nothing and yet you trusted them with me. Why?"

Michael sighed and nodded. "There's no easy way to explain it other than what Dean and Spencer said. You proved yourself before you were ever challenged."

Cas looked at him curiously.

"Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey . . . _stuff_. Apparently." And with that, the Archangel Michael disappeared.

* * *

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	18. Synaxis

**Chapter Eighteen**

**Synaxis**

Spencer shucked his jacket over the small chair that sat just to the side of his bed and barely managed to toe off his shoes before he crawled onto the sheets and forced his eyes closed, forced his head to stop thinking, moving, and screaming.

He'd never known his Aunt Mary and she remained a phantasm in the corner of his vision, his mind providing the kindling of imagination that she burned on. She was the spark in this powder keg that began it all and in that moment, just two years after he was born, Heaven decided to trade her life for his. Of course, logic assaulted him every time he attempted to even believe that. Heaven didn't really concern itself about _him_, per se. Michael had said, very calmly, very detachedly, that he would kill him without pause, if he could. Michael had thought his own brother had been in Sam just an hour ago and without question, without preamble, Michael had become judge, jury and executioner of the man whose flesh Lucifer presided within. There was no hesitation, no mocking banter or inquiry. Michael _was_ Death.

He had just taken lunch with Death.

He was the key to Hell on Earth and he'd just sat down to eat with Death.

The encroaching pain of a migraine burned behind his eyes and he rolled out of the bed and quickly released the tie-backs holding the portieres and immediately threw the room into an opaque blackness. Bracing his hands to the frames opposite the sill, Spencer stood there, arms outstretched over his head, tension running throughout his body like a livewire, muscles jumping every so often.

He hadn't known his aunt, but he'd known Jess.

The thought of her, the single image of her passing through his vision brought a choking sob up from his throat. Sammy was going to marry her. Sammy was going to be happy and free of all insanity that interwove their families like a plague and Spencer had wanted that so desperately for him. Whenever a case would bring him to the west coast and close enough to Stanford, he'd visit for a few hours after the conclusion of some dark chapter in human existence, the details of the case still fresh in his mind, and he would go to see Sammy. Ninety percent of the time he would be with Jessica. She was sweet, organized, reminded him a lot like J.J. A hell of a lot.

Sammy had nothing in those three years. His scholarship covered tuition and books but, unlike Spencer during his graduate years at Cal Tech where he made a decent stipend for teaching, the kid worked odd jobs just to make enough to put clothes on his back and he stretched himself willow-thin to move off campus in the summer after sophomore year to live with Jess. Sammy had too much stubborn pride to ask for help but Spencer never cared much for stubborn pride. Sammy eventually got resigned to the idea that a visit from Spencer meant a goodbye handshake with a little money in it so he could keep the roof over his head and he could take his girl to a movie that could involve more than a kiosk rental and a bag of off-brand potato chips.

Spencer saw how happy he was with her, saw how happy she was with him and came to the cold realization that Heaven allowed her to die because it wasn't sure he was yet strong enough to make the right choice. Could he blame Heaven for it? A little over a year later he met Tobias Hankel . . . and he made the wrong choice.

"Reid?" Derek's voice called out to him and Spencer looked up. How'd he get back on the bed? "Kid, come on, talk to me." Derek was seated at the side of the bed, hovering just a little over him. His voice wasn't panicked so Spencer figured that was a good sign. The entire story would be wonderfully topped-off with a guilt-ridden psychotic break in Victorian England. There was a sick poetry to it.

"It's just a headache," Spencer said, draping his arm across his face to shield the light now coming in from the ante-room.

Derek sighed. "I believe you _and_ I know you're lying."

"Maybe not _just_." Spencer added with a bit of a force behind his smile. He suddenly became very _very_ sickeningly tired of pretense and iron-will and the need to be strong and resolute when he just felt like cracked glass just about to be gently tapped in order to be completely shattered. "Morgan?" He croaked.

"I'm here, kid."

Spencer just smiled in the muted darkness. God damn it, Derek Morgan was strong. He was made of steel. He couldn't understand it, any of it. After all he'd seen and all he'd been through, he was still there, he was still looking out for him. Quietly, Spencer began, "I'm sure you won't be shocked knowing that my entire life, I've only had three real friends. I mean, you know, the team's family, we're all family but it's different, you know?"

Derek looked down with a grin and nodded, "Yeah, I know." He thought about it a moment. "I figure I'm somewhere on the list or I'd be offended to even have this discussion brought up in the first place."

Spencer smiled, "Yeah."

"Dean for sure. I can see that much. Not so sure about Sam."

Spencer sighed. "It's weird with Sammy. We have so much in common and we probably would be really good friends but its like—"

"You look out for him too much to really be friends."

A wry look passed over Spencer's features. "I don't always get the opportunity to have someone younger than me in the same room."

"It's natural. There's a division there that just happens. I can see it with Sam and Dean. They probably wouldn't be as close as they are if they had other people around them. Dean's protective."

"It kinda makes me wonder if . . ."

Derek shook his head with a smile, "I'm your friend, kid. I may call you _kid_ and yeah, I look out for you, but you're too damn book smart for me to mentally pull the big brother card all the time." With an arch of his brow he said, "If you ever get a social life we might actually hang out."

"That is such a contradiction."

Derek laughed. "It's like being in college and you're twenty one and your roommate is twenty. Other than chalking an ID, you're not hanging out much until they grow the hell up."

Spencer allowed himself to let out a small chuckle.

"So, who was your other friend?" Morgan asked.

"A guy back in high school. Jeff." Spencer counted on three fingers, "Jeffrey. Dean. Morgan." Three friends. His entire life.

Morgan raised his index finger and said, "Spencer Reid."

Reid frowned at that. "What?"

Well, if they were gonna start _sharing_ and everything . . . "I lost my dad at ten, kid. Hated the whole world after that. Then when I finally managed to trust someone—" he took a breath and said nothing else, the unspoken name of Carl Buford hanging thick in the air between them. "I saw a psycho play Russian roulette with you for our lives and you didn't even flinch. You locked yourself in a room full of anthrax, making sure it didn't get to me. I know you're my friend because I trust you." Derek knew the kid had to be terrified both times but his head was clear enough to protect them and him in particular. He thought back to his conversation with Hotch after the terrorist attacks in New York.

_"Quantico's requested you transfer to run the New York office,"_ Hotch had said to him. It was cold and more detached than Morgan had been used to from his boss.

_"Hotch, they haven't even buried her yet,"_ he'd said, referring to SSA Joyner.

_"We're at war. Things change." _

_"Don't I need your recommendation? You didn't give it, did you?" _

_"Your actions, as incredibly brave as they were, were still the actions of an agent who doesn't truly trust anyone."_ He'd said it so simply. Derek couldn't really understand what that meant, how it even mattered.

_"Hotch; I did it for this team."_

_"My opinion doesn't matter. The job's yours if you want it."_

_"Hotch, your opinion matters to me."_

_"My life matters to me, and I have and always will entrust you with it. Would you do the same for me?"_

Derek had understood what he meant then. Hotch trusted him with his life but Derek knew he didn't trust anyone but himself with his . . . anyone except for Reid. He'd seen the kid face down death and bullets for his friends. He knew he'd be there for him no matter what happened.

"Thanks, Morgan," Reid said, holding up his fist. Derek grinned and tapped Reid's hand, knuckles to knuckles.

"Thanks, Reid." Morgan pondered over something and then said, "So, now that that's established, what the hell is the next step in all of this?"

Spencer said with a sigh, "Choices." Everything that happened, up to that point, had been a lesson. To him, to Sam, to Dean, all of it, but it was centered most heavily on him. He didn't understand it all but they had power, they _were_ power and that power was being manipulated and twisted and turned and malformed to some other being's will. In the pretzel that had been time, he honestly believed that if he'd made the right choice in that graveyard in Georgia, resisted weakness and temptation, their lives would have been different. His focus and Dean's focus had been unjustly aimed at Sam the entire time. Sam would never have accepted Lucifer if he'd seen another way out. He would never have had to make that decision if not for the decision Spencer had made years earlier. Like time, choices weren't linear either and it suddenly struck him what kind of being, what kind of creature, Doc Shurley really was to see every single possibility and every single option and know what, where and when to intercede. The permutations and combinations alone boggled the mind. The math, the sheer math was . . . _impossible_, humbling, awe-inspiring, terrifying. Spencer knew in that moment there would never, ever be a machine mind that could do that. There would never, in as many more thousands of years as there had been, ever be anything man could make to match that.

He was Knowledge in every definition of the word. He was Creation in every sense that a new problem could be created that needed solving. And He still hadn't been sure what road Spencer would have taken because Spencer had a choice, and because Spencer had an evil angel waiting in the wings to overtake him, and because Spencer . . . was a part of Him.

Reid bolted upright and an explosion of light danced before his vision like a circle of holograms surrounding him as he placed it together. He, Dean and Sam were all parts of Him. Creation, Sustenance and Destruction. Clearly defined roles except for the last. It was the hub of the cycle. Destruction could become a precursor to Creation or just an End. Destruction is an End but Destruction in the course of becoming Sustenance is a Creation. Eating is that cycle in its most elemental—one thing destroyed to become something else, to feed something else, to give life to something else. That's why they wanted Dean. He was the only thing Sam could reverb back to, the only thing that could reverse the process of Destruction. Without him, Destruction would remain Destruction and with Spencer's innate nature being that to Create, but now being twisted into a foul, wrong kind of Creation, a Hell on Earth, nothing created could then pass onto Sustenance. The world wouldn't hold. It couldn't. A child created without anything to sustain it—water, food, air—would die before life could happen.

Regardless of the choices he or Sam made, if the demons destroyed Dean, annihilated his soul, there wouldn't be a Hell on Earth . . . there'd be no Earth. Period.

"Reid?"

"That's why they were put together. Why Dean was in a position to bond with him so closely," Spencer said, looking to the lights as they finalized their connections. "That's what Michael was warning us about." Reid turned to Morgan, the lights vanishing. "Sam's the only thing that can destroy Dean."

A small sound brought their heads around and they both saw the tall figure of Samuel standing in the doorway to Spencer's room, his brother was a half a step to his side. Spencer realized a second later that everything he'd been formulating in his mind had passed through his lips. They'd heard it all.

Dean took a deep breath and shrugged as he sighed, "And that's why that's just dumb."

Everyone turned to look at him. Sam's eyes were wide and frightened.

"Oh come on," Dean said, stepping into the room. "That's the big secret?" Dean whipped his head back to his brother who stood there stock-still. "Seriously?"

"Dean, it makes sense."

Dean rolled his eyes and waved him off, turning back to Derek and Spencer. "It makes sense and damn if big bad Pervy-angel told his faithful that his end game was literally, _End Game_, but we've got nothing to worry about now." The three of them looked at him doubtfully. "Really?" He asked, turning a circuit about the room. "Compared to the three of you my IQ's in the single digits and you seriously don't see the hole in this plan?" They frowned and he exhaled, lowering his head into his hands. "I swear, college rots the brain. Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Any chance you feel like ending all of existence _anytime_ soon?"

_Now_ Sam took the opportunity to look at Dean like he was insane. "No, of course not."

Dean had to restrain himself from mimicking a strangling motion at his baby brother's neck. "You think the megalomaniacal angel inside of you feels like it either?"

Sam wasn't getting it. "No. Pretty sure Lucifer wants to be king of something. Even if the only thing left on Earth is a toilet," he snorted.

"Pervy-angel's been traveling through time, specifically aiming at us, building super-vessel here," he said, gesturing to Spencer, "But pretty sure he was hoping you'd be the soul he'd eventually get," he said, looking to Sam. "Makes things a lot neater to end the world if you can snap your fingers to do it." Sam shuddered. "He has to be in _you_ to do it, not Spencer. In Spencer, all he'd do is kill me. I'd be crocheting doilies in another life before he can blink. That's why all those damn demons love monologueing and wasting time when they could just gank me, bullet-head-done. That's why they love making deals."

"They were stretching out the narrative," Spencer said. "Biding time?"

Dean pointed to him, "Yep." Dean looked to Sam. "Pervy-angel needed to tear up my soul. He needed you to do it. Bet he didn't expect Chuck to be so hands on making sure that shit wasn't happening."

"It was a feint," Sam said. "I was supposed to be Aeshma's vessel."

Spencer's mouth dropped open, "I was supposed to be Lucifer's."

"You're two years apart. Whatever signs they were looking for could be fudged, no problem. Half a degree here or there on a star map, drought here, famine there, what the hell ever. You two were switched."

They both stared at him and then each other for a silent length of time.

Dean pulled back the portieres and light flooded the room. Spencer flinched. Releasing the latch he pushed up the sash, letting in some air. "He still doesn't know. He thinks once he gets inside Spencer he's got _bulldozer-incarnate_ as a suit. That's why they're not even asking for Sam. They only want me and Spencer."

"He thinks once he gets in me, he'll destroy you, no problem, then he'll go after Sammy," Spencer said.

"Yahtzee. He doesn't even know that his entire plan is jacked up inside out." He glanced to Sam. "For him to get to me, he _actually_ has to get to you, but Chuck three-card Monted the asshole. In his head, he'll get into Spencer, bam, I'm gone, getting rid of me tickles Lucy up. They battle, he kills Lucy, he claims the world as his and then everything falls to shit."

"But he's still running under the impression that I'm you," Spencer said, pointing to Sam. "He never controlled your soul so he doesn't know that. The world doesn't end. The cycle restarts."

"Welcome extended vacation," Dean said, gesturing around. "He doesn't know what the hell we're up to. We Lake-of-Fire Lucy before we even get home. Spencer'll never say yes to him. Once we're back, no matter what he does, the world stays pretty much the way it is."

Sam frowned. "But Dean, all of this hinges on the fact that he doesn't know what's really going on. He'll still play it all the way. He'll try to get Spencer through Meg and those threats. He'll still need to destroy Lucifer to claim the Earth. Okay, so Spencer blocks him by refusing to let him in and who knows what kind of dangerous he can get after that? He might not be able to end the world but he can fall back on trying to have demons rule it. He'd find a three-day body willing to say _yes_ and he'd go after me. After he's done opening me up like a tuna can and sees that I'm empty then what? Me and Spencer are a pair of stains and all of this starts all over again? What? To the end of time?" He shook his head. "To the life where he manages to get into me and manages to kill you? That can't be the end of it."

Dean was leaning against the window frame, his arms crossed before him, his eyes trained on the floor. Sam's words rolled through him and he thought them over very carefully. As the seconds passed, the light coming in slowly brightened, like a cloud burning away on its path across the sun and the room was filled with a warm glow unlike any that ever hit that northern island on the Atlantic. The light became a prism of colors that spread through the room like a living rainbow.

He could feel the fifteen year old girl inside of him who knew she was never gonna feel that scared ever again.

"No, that's not the end of it," Dean silently said. He looked up to them and shrugged. "Michael said I'd deal with him so I figure Pervy-angel's got an expiration date. We just gotta figure out how to do it. We're not jumpstarting this again; we're not sending him back. It's done. It is _fucking_ finished." He looked to Spencer and with a small grin he asked, in a perfect mimic of Michael, "What does the lore say about the Holy Ghost?"

* * *

Castiel looked down to the portrait book in the library. Nini and David sat with him, a mountain of books before them. Upon returning from the Oriental Club, Cas had insisted on seeing everything the Campbells had in regards to the fallen and combating their power. Every book was couched in words and phrases to hide the truth, so much so that when Bobby Singer would acquire the books nearly a century from then, he would simply file everything away under the header of 'Fae Folk.' They would all glance over the books and grimoires absolutely needed for their present situation and never know. Cas was well familiar with hunting angels on tiers lower than he had attained but outside of sheer luck or providence he wouldn't be able to match wills with the Elders if they did decide to drag him back to Heaven and it would be them, most definitely. They wouldn't leave the task to anyone else. It would be up to Sam to safeguard them all and Sam would need to know where to begin.

He looked down to the portraits of Michael, of Enoch, of John Winchester throughout history and he just shook his head. Damn. His brother was so cool.

"Cas?" Nini called, shaking his arm a little.

"Oh, sorry," he replied, closing the book.

"I was saying, wouldn't the banishment circle we used on Aeshma work on the Elders?"

"If they had vessels to physically be contained by the circle, but then they would simply be back in Heaven for a generation. It's not a lasting solution, especially if they come for me here. A generation will last to before the 1920s. Besides, if they created vessels for themselves then they'd simply go straight for Aeshma."

David nodded, "And once you return to your own time, Michael would make short work of them, I think."

"They do not know what he is; they still believe he is in the void. If they knew who and what he was they would disappear wherever they could hide. Time, space, any dimension to get away from him. No, if they come it will be a spiritual attack. They would need information. Once they knew what I knew, I have no doubt they would run, just to escape from Michael."

"Thus ruining the trap," David said, comprehending.

"Well, that and possibly melting my mind in the process of extraction . . ." Cas said, the end of his sentence trailing off a bit.

"Err . . . so, each one of them is as powerful as Aeshma?" Nini asked.

"More. They aren't fallen," Cas said before amending, "Yet."

Nini frowned, "I don't think he will." Both turned to her. "I mean, allow them to _be_ fallen. Risk two dozen more _Aeshma's_ to run a ruinous torch through history? To do to me, to the others what he's done to us for thousands of years? I don't think so. Trust me when I say that if Michael doesn't destroy them, we will." She arched a brow, looking back down to the book and just hummed, "I won't let this pass." A shiver went up Cas and David's spines at the same time. They both knew that her use of 'I' encapsulated the soul itself, not her, Nini, in particular and likely spoke in reference to Dean. Under that tan and smooth skin was a creature that by its very existence kept the world in motion and hope in the hearts of the human race. She was both the defender and the protector; she was the advocate and the warrior. Where Joshua was the Word of God, she was the Will and beware any creature that would cross the Will of God.

Cas looked at her, imagining what was below that flesh, what was within. When he'd met Dean he didn't have many allusions left about him after their first encounter. He couldn't hear Cas without going deaf; he couldn't behold him without going blind. He was stubborn and ignorant and utterly impossible but his Will . . . his Will was stronger than anything he'd ever seen. Cas had only seen it falter for one solitary thing . . . his brother. With an uneasy feeling, he understood that perhaps one thing could foul the Will of God and it was love.

Nini reached over and took David's hand in hers in an absent gesture, her fingers curling into his. Cas watched and realized that neither even noticed it. It was that natural to them.

"I understand," he said, looking between them but his eyes eventually going to Nishtha. "Why you're often female." They glanced up to her but only Nini's expression told him that she already knew why. "There's only one thing a mother would die to protect," he said.

"It's not very sensible, is it?" Nini asked with a smile.

"Perhaps. But it is your role."

David grinned. "Most of the fiercest defenders in the animal kingdom are the females."

Cas frowned. "Then why was Dean—"

"If he were a girl," Nini began, her voice relaxed and matter-of-fact. "He never would have been a hunter." They both turned to her. She looked up to them and thought it was obvious. "He looks just like his mother. John would never do it. That's not logical either but it's the truth. If Dean were a girl, he'd be absolutely cloistered from hunting."

Cas considered that. It wasn't likely that John wouldn't seek out the thing that killed his wife but it was true that if either of his boys had been a girl, he would see too much of Mary in them and never put them on the path to meet up with the fate she'd seen. It wasn't a stretch to imagine that Dean, perhaps called Deanna after his grandmother, would have gone to live in Nevada with his aunt, Diana and his cousin, Spencer, ignorant of the danger in the world. It wouldn't last, of course. Like Spencer, she too would have been drawn into this world but she'd be completely unprepared for it. To break the seals they would have thrown her into the pit, possibly substituting the death of Spencer for Sam to be her motivator.

Would she have lasted forty years in the tortures of Hell? Would there have been anything left of her for Cas to rescue? Without the bond between her and Sam, would a female Dean be able to save him from Lucifer with the sheer power of his Will? Surely, the consideration isn't presented that as a female, Dean wouldn't be able to do everything he's already done, that as a woman he wouldn't be a world-class hunter but he would have had to have the opportunity to learn and the fact was very clear—John Winchester, looking to his little girl with her bright green eyes and blonde hair, her face covered in freckles, would shield her from the monsters, handicapping her from the danger that was already predestined to follow her.

"He knew," Cas said to no one in particular and they both didn't react, knowing exactly who he was talking about and what he meant. His Father knew.

Souls aren't gendered, but lives are.

"Ah ha," David said, turning the book he was holding around in his hands. "Defense against spiritual attacks. Aimed at humans, of course, angels being nothing but spirit, all the attacks are . . . well, _obviously_, but being that as it may, often the dream cycle is targeted."

"Hmm. We don't sleep," Cas said in almost a low growl.

David nodded. "Like I said, human spiritual attack. The human spirit is most exposed during sleep. It seems that angels are most exposed—" David's eyes widened and he looked up a little paler than he had been before.

Castiel immediately tensed. "During the night of the Synaxis," he said.

Nini looked to them both and said, "Please recall I'm a goulash of several religions. I have no idea what a _Synaxis_ is."

"The Synaxis of Archangel Michael and the entire heavenly host," David began, "is the major feast in honor of the angels for resisting Lucifer and the rest of the fallen. Think of it as an angelic Sabbath. They're invited to rest and relax but because of that, they're weakest then against attack. It follows a liturgical timeline that parallels the history of Earth. October 31st is All Saint's Eve, representing the chthonic hold on Earth. November 1st is All Saints Day, honoring the souls that have, over the years, beat back the darkness, personal, literal, honoring those who have died in the service of Heaven. All Soul's Day is November 2nd and is for those who have died and cannot enter Heaven."

Nini frowned, "Isn't that the day Mary died?"

Castiel nodded. "There is a lot of power during those days. Azazel tied what he did to Sam to the power of the day. Feeding a child demon blood does not change them without a lot of power involved. That is why he had to ask Mary's permission to have access to Sam, to lower the defenses around him, around the home, to allow the rite to flow."

"Ohh," Nini said, understanding. "The threshold. You're right. I don't know any demon that knocks ten years in advance before they break down your door."

"Exactly," David said.

"And the Synaxis?" She asked.

David continued, "Established according to the Paschalion, the calculation of the origin of the year in relation to Lent and Easter, the Synaxis occurs in the ninth month to honor the nine orders of the angelic hierarchy and on the eighth day of the month to represent the seven days of creation, the fall of man and of Lucifer. It's—"

"The day after. After all the fighting, the dust settles, the angels get to sleep?" Nini asked with a small smile. David loved his wife and simply conveyed it in his eyes. "Alright, so ninth month, eighth day. How does it relate to All Saints and All Souls? We're no where near September."

Castiel was starting to understand exactly what a headache was. He'd gotten a glimpse of it when he had lost the majority of his powers but whatever was crawling up his spine at that moment was going to be enormous in a few minutes.

He said to her, "The eighth day of the ninth month is called the Day of the Dread Last Judgment and the first month, according to Paschalion, is March, following the vernal equinox."

Nini's eyes widened as the simple math ran through her mind. "If March is the first month then the ninth is November . . . and the eighth day is today."

Castiel closed the book before him and just said very quietly, "If I don't leave before sunset, the Elders will come for me here. Come for me and kill me."

* * *

Kansas' _Carry On My Wayward Son _was playing from the small iPad speakers and sounded as if they were at a live concert and the venue had the acoustics of the Teatro Colón. The speaker opening had to be one inch square at most but they all felt like they were in the middle of a surround sound engineer's wet dream.

"I can't believe iTunes works here," Sam said fiddling with the machine and staring at all the free music available.

"He did say it can download anything," Dean said, lying on his bed, his knees bent. He tossed a cricket ball up into the air, rolling it in a spin and catching it on its descent.

"Dean," Spencer said from the window seat. "You're supposed to be relaxing."

"I'm relaxed," he said, a little defensively.

"You're listening to progressive rock and—"

Dean pressed back into the down pillow and said, "Relaxing." With his eyes closed he tossed the ball into another roll and made it go wild a little as it angled to drop over his stomach. Reaching with his other hand he caught it before the hard leather-bound cork dug into his navel. Everyone arched a collective eyebrow at that.

Derek hummed, sitting next to Spencer, "What do you think he could do with Metallica playing?"

Spencer grinned and said, "Dean and Metallica? Probably levitate the bed."

Eyes still closed, Dean sighed, "Enter Sandman."

He threw the ball up again, ready to catch it when it didn't fall. Dean's eyes snapped open and Cas was over him, his face grave, cricket ball in his palm. "We have to go."

"What?" The four of them asked at the same time. Nini and David appeared at the bedroom door moments later, having had to take mortal means down the body of the home from the library. Explaining the situation, Cas seemed to glance to the windows every so often as if dreading each second that brought sunset closer even though it was at least an hour away.

Sitting up in the bed, Dean nodded to Cas and Sam, "You two go. Hop over to tomorrow, we'll meet you there."

"Dean, they can come after you—"

"We're gonna be hunting a ripper, I don't think sleep's on the menu."

Sam angled to his brother's line of sight and said, "I'm not leaving you." He then looked up to Spencer and Derek, "I'm not leaving any of you."

"Last time I checked you were part of the angel brigade too. If you _don't_ go, they'll unlock your safe easier than they'll unlock Cas'."

"I'm stronger than they are. Michael said so."

"He also said that me and Spencer had to be no where near if they did come. If you stay then you'll be in trouble _and_ so will we."

Sam worried his lip and realized Dean was right. If he or Cas stayed they'd be the bait that attracted the sharks. Bait never won against the sharks, as far as he could tell. He considered insisting that the trip was over, that they would all leave together, that they already knew the fate of Mary Kelly and getting involved would only lead to disappointment but he also knew what he'd read on the tablet. He knew he'd be challenged to make choices that didn't make any sense but choices he knew, in his heart, were right. He also knew how sick he still felt over what happened the night before. He didn't want a repeat of that feeling. Ever. He could learn to make the right choices if it kept pain like that away.

Still, he hesitated. Dean gestured to Spencer and Derek, "They know serial killers." He gestured to himself and Nini and David, "We've got the funky bunch. We'll be okay."

Sam nodded. "Okay."

Castiel looked to the room in general and said, "We'll be here right after sunrise." They all nodded in reply and understanding. A moment later, the angel and his apprentice were gone.

The company was in silence for a long moment, realizing that their only true defenses were gone, sent over to the next day where there was always the possibility one or all of them would never meet them.

Dean looked around the room and let out a weak snort. "Oh come on, don't look like that. It's just demon Jack the Ripper . . . and if you fall asleep, super-angel Freddy Krueger." Nini and David didn't understand the reference but the look in Derek and Spencer's faces was enough of an explanation. "We'll be fine," he added, limply.

A knock came to the door of the apartments and everyone jolted as if they were each attached to a live wire. Wentworth entered the ante-room carrying a silver tray with a note on cardstock on top. He made his way to his mistress.

"Thank you," Nini said, taking the note as the man remained where he was, waiting for a reply. She read it over and then sighed a little, not in displeasure but she wasn't exactly jumping up for joy.

"What is it?" Dean asked her.

"The Tilneys have accepted our invitation to dinner." Spencer, Derek and Dean all sighed. "Well, we can't very well rescind." They sighed deeper. She turned and gave instructions to Wentworth.

David stood before the front of the room and nodded, "Well, I suppose it's to be expected that Jean Louise said you'd need dinner clothes. Granted she said Sam and Castiel would need clothes as well but I suspect omission would be too much of a clue to a change in design."

All Dean heard was 'dinner clothes.' He cleared his throat and said, "Shouldn't we be doing recon or something?"

David gave him a look that was so close to Sam's admonishing grin that Dean suddenly remembered the soul that was there under the skin. "Reconnaissance? On a demon who has a window of availability that's north of five hours long? We can follow the girl all we want but in the end, the creature can jump into anyone it wants to and when it wants to."

He was right. No amount of preparation could help when dealing with a jumper. They could have a fixed vessel but without Sam and Cas, they wouldn't be able to see them beyond their suits. That just meant whoever hovered around Mary Kelly could be the demon, from a cop on the street to her landlady. He'd already discussed the possibility of just grabbing the girl off the street and keeping her on lockdown. They knew it wasn't an idea they were comfortable with. The way fate had unfolded, they may save Mary Kelly from the Ripper only to have her hit by a stampeding horse the second she was out of their sight. They could save her and the Ripper could choose a different target or several. Most of all, they knew in the end that they could do everything right, they could save her on that day and the moment they left, he could just target her again. There was no good way to approach it so the best answer would be to keep everything as it was and supposed to be, only interfering when the exact moment was upon them.

David glanced to the cricket ball and asked, "You play?"

"Nope," Dean said.

Captain Campbell could see that Dean was clearly inviting him to ask and he laughed, seeing so much of Nini in him. "Alright, I'm curious."

Dean glanced to Spencer. Spencer, gesturing to the ball said, "It's a focus mechanism. Apparently we're _supposed_ to have some physical manifestations of ability. I've been tapping into mine my whole life—"

David pointed to him. "Your genius."

Spencer nodded. "Related to my role. Sam's innate ability is kind of hidden—"

"By the angel superpowers," Dean said with a shrug. "Before that it was the demon blood since he was six months so we really have no freaking clue."

"Tied to his role, it's probably best not to know," Spencer said.

David raised his hand, "I know how to mix fabulous drinks, if that helps."

Dean smiled and tossed the ball from palm to palm, "I'm defense, offense, white picket fence, you name it."

"Tactical support," David said, understanding. It was perfectly reasonable. David had seen Nini, more than once, shoot a can from a fence post from nearly half a mile away . . . with a short bow, on horseback.

With a shrug, Dean said, "I always figured I was just good at shooting things."

"And the ball?"

Dean spun the tiny heavy ball on his finger as if he were a Harlem Globetrotter. "Well. Anything can be a weapon." He thought back to Marie and her powers. Literally, _anything_.

Nini turned back to the group as Wentworth made his way out of the apartment. "Now everyone, try to be nice." Nini waited a moment, her pause heavy on the air before she added, "to the General."

"Nini," David said sternly but with a smile. Dean could almost hear that being said, '_Lucy_.'

"There's a little more than an hour before sunset and two before dinner. If you nap, do it in shifts," Nini said to them. "No sleep once the sun goes down. If they are coming for Castiel, they'll be looking for him after sunset."

"Great," Dean sighed, leaning back onto the bed. "Now we're vampires."

"Wonderfully alive vampires," she waved to them, clutching onto David and pulling him from the room.

Dean closed his eyes and said, "Saves more time for me to take the first twenty, since I'm already on the bed, and all." Derek and Spencer just rolled their eyes at him as he quickly fell into a deep nap. They gave him thirty.

* * *

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	19. Euthyphro Dilemma

**Chapter Nineteen  
****  
Euthyphro dilemma**

They never discussed what would happen if Aeshma managed to enter a temporary body and then looked right into the eyes of each one of them, finding out the truth, knowing his plan had been destroyed before it even had a chance to come to fruition. To know that the triumph over Lucifer in battle would be lost to him because it would imply the destruction of Sam. Without Sam he could not destroy Dean, then, through Spencer, life on Earth would continue. What wouldn't he do then?

Trust.

Trust seemed to be a theme recurring through this story of theirs. Aeshma was betraying those who were following him and knowing that, never told them the secret of the eyes. What the eyes meant, what the souls hid. All they knew was a demon had to kill Lucifer to gain paradise. That was clear when they aimed for Bobby and not Dean in Spencer's kitchen. That was clear when they asked for him and Spencer and not Sam. If the battle was just between Spencer and Sam, Dean would be surplus. To them he would be better off dead. It would even be more logical to kill him in front of Sam, giving him a reason to submit to Lucifer and enabling Aeshma to convince Spencer, once he was finally all alone, that only through him, by presenting himself as anything he wanted to, by encouraging Spencer to say 'yes' to him that Lucifer could be destroyed. But Aeshma couldn't have Dean just die; no, the cycle would restart. His opportunity would vanish. If only he'd trusted his generals with the truth, Azazel would have seen that baby Sammy Winchester's eyes were perfectly wrong.

He was planning on betraying those who trusted him and he hid the truth from them. If he planned on simply taking over the world, defeating Lucifer in battle would be enough.

Spencer didn't consider the possibility of Aeshma, with everything against him, deciding to go after Sammy. To appeal to his _true_ vessel in a last-ditch effort not to claim the Earth as his and for Hell as it burned in its destruction but just to end Dean, calmly, quietly, and then watch as all across the face of the planet every human mind lost the sense of hope they inherently had in trusting the world would continue. Losing the sense of purpose to go on. Never understanding the concept of love. Locked in their minds with nothing but despair and doubt as to if the sun would rise the next day. The world, the very sanity of the whole world, would die in the throes of inexorable madness and reverting to a time that had been long past . . .

To Spencer's amazement, his crawl through Immanuel's memories and Apsara's journal, so much like John Winchester's journal, which sat in the family library written in those days and years after their encounter; in the lost texts that had been burned in a fire over a hundred years earlier in Mumbai but had been reborn on a small tablet computer that was _designed in California and assembled in China_, allowed him to see the truth in all its fullness.

As he understood it, seeing his own thoughts through the two decades Immanuel Veritas had remained living after merging with Spencer and combining the Winchester Gospels and the early Book of Campbell with Sara's family histories and the Vatican tomes he smuggled from Italy that there was a presence of God that is omniscient, omnipresent and universal through an infinite amount of dimensions, multiverses, where everything is and is not, happens and does not. Conversely there is a presence within each and every single person and animal and creature and flora there ever was and that there ever would be. Within that internal presence is a capacity to draw experiences, to analyze, to explore and ponder upon but by its own nature it tends to be truly an alien presence. It was that presence that deemed it needed a deeper understanding beyond the analytical, beyond the scientific. It wanted to evolve its understanding with those it had created.

To thus evolve required Him to see the human condition from that truly human perspective: organically, faithfully and honestly. He took that aspect of Himself, the wonderer, the questioner, the observer and changed it, knowing what it would be without it having been changed, knowing it would be cold as ice if it could not relate in understanding and He carved it out into three planes, each representing distinct qualities of Himself.

The first was the Knowledge of God. In the beginning there was nothing but a knowing of Himself. In that knowing sprang everything else. With understanding He engineered and constructed all places and all things. From the galaxies to the ants. From DNA to dark matter. He created all, even the chthonic ones; the only motivator within Him at the time was to _flow _in the process of creating things regardless of their nature. Subsequently He made the _human_, a general moniker for any self-aware creature on every world he decided to populate with life. Each planet had its own version of the _human_ creature and they related on par to Him but differed immensely from one another, each according to their surroundings. To them all He gave them choice; they didn't need life or to live if they could not determine where life would take them. He could see all their choices, from the unmistakably good to the heinously evil. He had assumed the choices would be clear but in every world He created, there were so many who would choose evil. He was the engineer who created a utopia and populated it with people who would lie, cheat, steal and kill, most when they were feeling capricious and some . . . who claimed and believed it was a necessity. It was a curious aspect of the human condition. To make bad choices for self-justified good reason.

Spencer saw himself in this. It was clear and unnerving. He always joked about taking a philosophy class because there was never a right answer but the fact of the matter was that he, personally, never fought much with his morality. He never understood why. It wasn't as if his father had been a shining example of humanity and his mother . . . well, she was a good person and she loved him but she was not a good example. He loved her but he couldn't understand her. Spencer didn't know if he was morally _just_ or a _good person_ but he never often doubted that any of his choices, except for that one glaring one, were ever bad ones. He just seemed to _know_ what was right and he _knew_ what was wrong. It was the reason he didn't often comprehend other people. They confused him, they puzzled him. The answers had always been so clear to him and it baffled him why other people couldn't see them. It was his strongest motivator to stop using Dilaudid. It was one of the reasons why he knew that though he was often _conceptually_ logical and rational, he wasn't a rational or logical being, there was an undercurrent of morality. It was both logical and rational to continue with the Dilaudid. He was in pain and it helped. He could function at work and he would be fine. Most of his anger at that time was a product of his experience, not of the drug. Like any doctor about to perform surgery, anesthetic would be administered. Illogically and irrationally he inherently _knew_ it was wrong and so he stopped. He just . . . stopped. He still wasn't sure how he managed that. It should have been impossible. Yes, he'd had guidance and he hadn't been alone, but the strength of the drug he was on was enough of a reason he shouldn't have been able to do it without more assistance than he had. Considering that and its implications, Spencer turned back to the papers.

When He finally created that small planet on the corner of a galaxy so far from anything else as to be in complete isolation, He knew what some of their choices would be and to better prepare them for the possibility, He carved a second aspect of Himself.

The second was the Will of God. It was this will and determination that He possessed, announcing to those He loved that they would be protected, that they would thrive and survive. If He could buffer them, provide for them a rod and staff to hold them up, they would be insulated from making the worst of their choices. Sustenance, protection and love were what He identified was what was lacking in most of those who made the worst choices. Through the self-affirmation of work, hunger would be staved off, through the strength of their will, enemies would be fought back and love, in all its manifestations, would be accessible. Man would know, in his heart, there was something out there looking out for him. Man would know there was comfort to be had in the world. There would be no despair if even the possibility of happiness endured.

Of course it was Dean. Dean who enjoyed the world in all its sensory delights but who refrained from taking it to overindulgence. Dean who ate voraciously, loved voraciously and protected those he loved and even those he didn't know with that same spirit. Dean who couldn't tolerate to be still, who always had something to do, had a job to move on, had to have his hands in action. And yes he was often a female throughout time because a child's first protector was always its mother, deriving everything it needed to survive before it even received the breath of life.

But the middle couldn't always hold. There couldn't just remain creation and compassion. There would always be those in the world who sought to attack and destroy, choices they made and secured for themselves, those who reveled in evil. His creations would need more than a champion, they would need a warrior. Where a champion held down the home front, a warrior battled against the enemy in his territory.

The third was the Wrath of God. The anger, the rage of Him against those who would harm one of His; the punishment and the mercilessness too often necessary in the face of evil.

_Heaven help him who would face the wrath of God._

. . . Sammy. If the Wrath of God tore apart the will to live . . .

Spencer turned away from Mani's fine scrawl, his handwriting too much like his own to be denied and he realized all of what the elder _him_ had learned in those years before his death. Comparing the vast amount of source material he had, Mani had cobbled together the truth before Spencer had learned it himself that very day. He understood the roles that he, Dean and Sammy played in this; in life, in history, in humanity in general. Sara was right—they had been given different names and faces among different religions through time, each version a shadow of the truth but the essential roles never truly changing.

From the basis of the Trinity they were derived from a part of it and then split into threes once more. The familiar name was Holy Ghost but in fact it was the older more arcane title of 'Spirit.' The book of Revelation spoke of the seven spirits of God. He'd had Dean read that verse . . . gosh, how long ago? Before this adventure even began, before they knew a fraction of the truth. He remembered that section from the story where it had been uploaded onto the tablet just after they'd gone to Mumbai.

_Spencer went to a shelf and selected one of the many Bibles there. Flipping through to the end he held it out to Dean who took it with an uncomfortable rumbling fluttering through his gut. "Revelation, chapter five."_

_Dean read it aloud, "Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, 'Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?' But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, 'Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.' Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb—" Dean slammed the book shut before reaching the end._

_Spencer took the book from him and felt Dean's fingers shaking. "It was right there the whole time," he said quietly._

It had been there the whole time. Right there. The seven spirits of God was really them, these seven most recent ancestors they were now visiting in chapters from the past, all versions of themselves and all parts of Him. It was . . . he considered. "What was it," he muttered as pages of scripture leafed through his mind. "Isaiah 11?" Spencer pictured it in his mind.

_The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him,  
__the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,  
__the Spirit of counsel and might,  
__the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord._

Three. Distinctly three aspects. Wisdom and understanding. Counsel and might. Knowledge and fear.

It continued though the landscape of his thoughts.

_His delight is in the fear of the Lord,  
__And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes,  
__Nor decide by the hearing of His ears;  
__But with righteousness He shall judge the poor,  
__And decide with equity for the meek of the earth;  
__He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth,  
__And with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked._

Spencer took an unsteady breath and understood that entire section had been describing Sammy's role. _With the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked._

They were each a part of that amorphous being that was the living aspect of God in the world. They were His knowledge, His protection and His vengeance. Sara had illustrated that to the Hindus they were known as the Trimurti: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Compounded with that would be whatever aspects they would live as females and thus also called the Tridevi—Saraswati, the goddess of learning and arts, cultural fulfillment; Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and fertility, material fulfillment; and Durga, the goddess of wrath and benevolence.

From the continuation of Mani's studies into their origins he saw that several more peoples adopted the idea of them as they passed through the epochs of time. In Taoism they were called the Three Purities: one for creation, one for sustenance, one for spirits. In Slavic mythology they were the Zorya: Morning Star, the maiden goddess who allows the sun to cross the sky; the Evening Star, the mother goddess of exorcism and protection; the Midnight Star, the crone goddess of death and rebirth.

There was archeological evidence of _the three_ all over the world, being known as the "Hooded Spirits" right there in Britain or the "Genii Cucullati" in Italy. In north-west Europe they were called the Matronae with over a thousand artifacts in existence. In Irish mythology they were the Mórrígan. The ancient Greek Charities, Graces and the Erinyes were each interpretations of them individually. Brigid, the Moirae, the Parcae, over and over and over throughout time.

In the end Mani gave them a name that, to an old Catholic priest and a kid from Las Vegas Nevada, he found overwhelming from all angles, no matter how he tried to comprehend it: the Shekhinah.

Reid laid down the papers and rubbed at his eyes. He'd gone up to the library at Morgan's insistence that he could watch over Dean. They'd agreed on when Reid would come and check in on them, after the first half hour, and then Dean told him he'd look after Morgan. In those two shifts he found the answers he'd been searching for. The first spark came from when Dean laid it all out, as he saw the situation. Dean was ably versed in strategy and they'd heard the ring of truth in it. Spencer had actively searched Mani's memories and knew from his talks with Sara that, though at the time he didn't completely believe what she'd been saying, she told him that they would all have some ability to help them in their task and it was always in tune with their roles. Mani had Spencer's genius; it was easy to see what the ability was. Sara was the most capable fighter of her day, her diminutive size not withstanding. She told him that the other aspect of them, ultimately Sam, would be able to do both terrible and wonderful things. Things that could reshape the world. The specifics were never known for it was an ability that would only come to true fruition in the heat of the final battle.

He sighed, trying not to be cynical but the truth was, in this sense, in the sense of what they were and how they functioned, _Holy Spirit_ simply meant _Trial Balloon_. They lived, over and over, providing a sort of biofeedback to the source. They were the elbows testing the bathwater, informing the brain what was going on. They were the neurons, they were the sensory perception, they were the filters Doc Shurley used to understand the queer little creatures He had created. That was why it was necessary for them to live so many different and varied lives, to have so many diverse experiences.

In essence, _they_ were the challenge and answer to Plato's Euthyphro dilemma: _Is something good because God says it is or does God say it is because it is?_ They accounted for the evolution of law, from shellfish will send you to Hell to Red Lobster's not so bad. From adultery would have you stoned to he who has no sin cast the first. Through them, He came to a deeper understanding of the human situation through the life experiences of those parts of Him: those Campbell boys.

What was it Doc had said? _"I make decisions. By nature, they're all the right decisions . . . But that's the thing: when anyone makes a choice out of several options that's it. That one choice is it and the rest are not but with me it's a step beyond that. My choice inherently makes all the other choices wrong."_

In the old days, something like that would have landed a person in the pit . . .

Spencer's gaze caught a small notation on a strip of paper hanging from one book. He reached over and picked it up, looking it over. Mani had made an extraction from . . . Spencer inhaled. From Isaiah. He shook his head and mumbled out loud, "I get it." Reading it he rolled it over and over in his head, finally paraphrasing it: _My ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts._ Immanuel added under the extraction, "Being thus," he wrote in Latin, "He could guide humanity best by trying to appropriate an understanding of our ways. It explained why when I," (the 'I' was scribbled out) "when _Spencer_, and the others were younger, His feedback was mainly from Spencer who had experienced the adult world before the others and then why, later on, he adopted some of Dean's tendencies which would seem purely carnal in observation and perhaps blasphemous but it was true: Doc Shurley eventually evolved into a man who liked his women and his liquor. The only maladaptation was when He clearly said to Sam in that motel that what he was choosing to do was wrong. He understood the choice but He wouldn't accept it."

Tapping the table, Spencer wondered over that. It was true that as he was growing up, Doc was very much like him, seeing the world through Spencer's perspective but even then, some of Dean was showing through. Spencer then wondered if Dean getting that amulet and having it flash in the library back in Vegas wasn't just a way to signal Spencer's awareness back in Sioux Falls so many years later, thus unfolding everything and revealing His true nature to them. Hadn't it been chance, sheer chance the way Dean had received the amulet? Bobby had given it to Sam, calling it 'real special' and it had been intended for John. Later in the story it seemed like Bobby didn't even remember it or why it was special.

Spencer considered that the books had been published after Sam lost Jess and they were written in that Gothic romantic style of the heartsick. Doc had absorbed Sam's loss.

Gin, vodka, women, hyper intellectuality and a strong moral compass, depression and isolation—those were the aspects of Doc Shurley after their three combined lifetimes. Spencer muttered, "I wouldn't blame Him for an apocalypse." There was a final aspect to Him of course: undeniable strength of character.

Cyclical in their nature, they completed a feedback loop from spark to flame to smoke. The smoke at the end could be the result of making food or the result of a fatal fire. Dean, as the holder of the middle had to be the one of them to break the seal. He was the embodiment of the human life in the process of living. Thirty years of incessant torture in the most graphic and sickening ways was a lot to ask and the center did not hold. To even comprehend, to even _understand_, that Doc could make that choice, that some part of Him could do that but it had been clearly written almost two thousand years ago and understood since the beginning of time that one day He could and would. One day the world would end and only through the Will of God would it be allowed. The Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, had to be the one to open it and start it all.

It explained why the books were no longer published after Dean went to Hell. Doc was getting all that feedback, internalizing it and yes, the entire forty years of Hell had been written and stored as data on his computer and yes, Spencer had read all of it.

In that breaking of Dean was created a fissure in the Will, a resignation to coming events and as it was also written, the next leg of the prophecy was to welcome the Wrath of God and the mantle that started with creation and that had been Spencer's, which had then gone to Dean to safeguard the world, was then passed to Sam when Dean broke but Doc held back on it going any farther than that, didn't He? He had Castiel and the others storm Hell and retrieve Dean, returning the Will to the world. He wouldn't allow it to continue, He wouldn't allow Sam to be turned and twisted by Ruby; He wouldn't allow the demons, in their arrogant blindness, to hand over the keys to the Earth to one who would destroy it.

Castiel had told Michael that it was a false start and Michael said that there was no such thing. Spencer couldn't say who was right. The one who started it had to end it; that much was true. Those words meant so much now. Either Dean finished it by retrieving the mantle from Sam, setting the world right again or in fury, rage and wrath, he fell to Sam and it ended in that way.

He leaned over the desk and pinched his eyes closed, thinking, wondering, needing to know where they went from there. If Aeshma, aggravated with Spencer's refusals, took up an alternate body he would honestly only need one look at him to understand it all. He would go after Sam and with only three days to survive, to know the perfect vessel he created would likely not happen again for thousands of years, to know God would again and again and again frustrate his designs . . . Sam was right: what wouldn't he do? Earth itself would be off the table, they would make sure of that. They were determined to destroy Lucifer before even stepping foot in their own timeline again. Aeshma's only option then would be to get into Sammy and go after Dean. Could he do it?

No.

That option was just as viable as Spencer saying yes to him, which meant it wasn't happening. Knowing what they both knew, knowing the consequences of saying _yes_, they would never, could never, not in any way say yes to him. It was a sheer impossibility which meant the uneasy feeling Spencer was encountering just at that moment was simply . . . what would the angel do to convince them? What terrors would they see in the face of their refusals, first Spencer and then Sam? Would it be enough, not to have Sam say _yes_, but enough to unlock that thing inside of him that could end the world all on its own?

Spencer couldn't help the shiver that crept up his spine. Their return to Sioux Falls, no matter what, would have the potential to change the world.

"Poindexter?" Dean called from the door.

Spencer restrained a jump and then just glared at him. "Stop calling me that."

Dean gave him a snicker and asked, "Don't like it? How about 'pocket protector?'"

Spencer just blinked at him, his face calm and neutral.

"Oh come on, it's a nickname."

"As if you care; you don't even call Sammy 'Sammy' anymore."

Dean shoved his hands in his pockets and just exhaled, "He doesn't like it."

"Oh. He hasn't corrected me on it."

"After the crap he's been through? Kid doesn't even have a last name anymore, whatever the hell _that_ means. Just don't _stop_ calling him that unless he gives you shit about it. Since he hasn't, he prolly doesn't mind it coming from you."

Taking that in, Reid nodded. "So, Morgan's up?"

Walking into the library, Dean nodded and said, "Yeah, wouldn't be here if not." He gave Spencer a serious look and said, "Didn't really sleep too good."

Closing his eyes tight, Spencer said, "Oh, damn it. Cas won't be here to—"

"Yeah. I know. If he doesn't get that mind whammy, Meg and what that crazy bitch did to him is gonna come back and hard."

Spencer shook his head. After what Meg had done to him Cas had been keeping the darkness away from the forefront of Morgan's mind. Spencer thought back to that moment when he woke up in his bedroom after seeing what had been done to his best friend. How Morgan had been there, looking calm and whole and sane after an ordeal that would have sent anyone to an institution for a few days.

_"How you feeling, kid?"_ Morgan had said with worry in his eyes but it all seemed to be aimed at Reid. It had shocked Spencer how he could even still speak coherently after that.

_"I don't have a right to that," _He'd said, honestly and truly believing that. How could Morgan ask about him after what happened?_ "How are you?"_

_"Considering . . ." _Derek had begun, but he couldn't finish_. "I don't remember all of it, the worst of it. It's weird. Cas keeps erasing the memory when it starts to come back. I don't know how he knows but he does."_

Each time Castiel had restrained the memories they would take longer to emerge but if Cas was out of their contact until dawn, who knew what nightmares Derek would live through? This had the potential to be very, _very_ bad.

Dean coughed and said in a low voice, "He's getting ready."

"Okay." He didn't want to worry about it. He told himself not to. They couldn't do anything about it and shining a light on it could make the reaction come faster.

"Nini told me to get you back downstairs and dressed," Dean said in an attempt to veer the conversation.

"Okay," Spencer repeated. Pushing away his fear he grasped onto something, anything to say. He shrugged a little and managed, "I like her."

With an infinitely ironical tone, Dean dryly said, "Thanks."

It took Spencer a minute and then he just blushed. "I mean, she's—you're—she's . . ." he exhaled. "This situation is so absurd."

"Says the bun in my oven," Dean muttered as he looked over the papers and books. "Figuring out the mysteries of the universe?"

"Well, since you mentioned it . . ." Spencer explained to Dean everything he'd learned and all he'd been able to confirm. At the end of it, Dean was seated next to him looking like a mouse that just went through a spin cycle.

"So, wait, what? When you said 'aspect' I kinda figured you meant like . . . you know. Like in _Inception_, those people in the dreams. Like they were part of the dreamer but they were like . . . you know?" Dean was floundering with every word flashing by in his mind.

"Only you would relate theology theatrically."

"Come on, I'm serious." And by the look in Dean's face, Spencer saw he was, so much so that the expression did something to his face Reid had never seen before. Worry, concern, doubt, fear . . . it didn't look _right_ on Dean. His was a face for smiling.

"You mean like shades? Constructs?"

"Yeah. Part of the main guy but_ not_—"

"A physicality, yeah. We're the lens He sees us through. I mean, you know, the other, rest of _us_."

"So we're the way He _gets_ us? We're His," Dean's face twisted, "His feelers?"

Spencer scrunched his nose. "I wouldn't say—"

"Nah, you'd say like, _appendages_ or something," Dean said, throwing up his hands.

Spencer just paused and dully blinked. "Can we not picture ourselves as Doc Shurley's _appendages_?"

They stared at one another letting that settle between them. Dean was the first to crack a smile. Spencer buried his face in his hands, his words smothered as he repeated, "This situation is so absurd!"

The moment passed and they soon sobered.

"Sam won't let Pervy-angel pull his strings," Dean said looking down to the covered table.

Spencer nodded. "Yeah, but—" he sighed. "This is still Sam's game; he controls the board."

With a wipe of his face with his palm Dean replied, "Yeah. We're still in Wrath of God, Apocalypseville."

"Until you finish it, Sam decides what happens."

Dean thought back to Michael's warnings: _"You need to talk to him. Everything you've been occupied with: Aeshma and the Elders and the demons doesn't compare to the choice he may have to make if you fail to end the Apocalypse. Beyond all of this you are still what you all are. In that, you three must realize you're far more powerful than you can currently imagine. If one of you falls—"_

It was clear enough, wasn't it? In the end the Elders meant nothing, Aeshma meant nothing, demons meant nothing. In the end it all came down to Sam. If Sam fell . . . everything would start getting real Biblical real fast.

* * *

Dean looked to his twisted cream-colored bow tie and growled. Fourth time. The damn thing was so thin and weird and . . . weird. He looked over to Spencer and Derek who sat reclined, listening to Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 9, and was sure they were pretending that they weren't secretly watching him crash and burn with the bow tie. Again.

"You look like penguins," he was glad to inform them. The three of them were in matching black suits of fine herringbone wool with cream-colored wool waistcoats and like colored thin bow ties over crisp white shirts. Matching cream colored gloves were tossed on the bed.

"_Dressed_ penguins," Derek agreed, a mockery of a solemn expression on his face. Spencer gave him a quick glance and a small smile, hoping with everything inside of him that Derek's capacity to make a joke lasted through the night.

"I'm about to hit this shit Vin Diesel style," Dean said, pulling off the tie and popping his jacket collar. Fearing the idea that he was being sincere, Spencer jumped up from the window seat and went him, pulling the tie from Dean's fingers.

Grumbling, Dean said, "I didn't ask for help." But instead of pulling away, he stood still and allowed Spencer to tie it for him. "Don't really use these . . . average day and all," he attempted as an explanation.

"I feel ya," Derek agreed before he turned off the Mozart.

"Hey!" Spencer objected.

"You got up," Derek mumbled, switching the music. An electric guitar twang and whine came up through the powerful speaker.

Dean's eyes widened and he stared openmouthed at Derek as the intro played. "Is that—"

Derek leaned back and nodded, looking very satisfied, "Oh hell yes it is."

Dean looked back to Spencer, "See? Now _that_ is music." The sounds of Jimi Hendrix's _Voodoo_ _Child_ filled the room.

Spencer rolled his eyes, pulling back to make sure the tie was balanced. "Don't start with the conversion speech, not again Dean. There's nothing deficient in my taste in music. And I can appreciate rock and _some_ metal up to the 80's with Queen and _some_ Metallica being the only ones to survive the decade."

Dean called him out on his bullshit, "You had a Nirvana phase."

Spencer looked supremely vindicated, "So you admit Nirvana counts as rock?"

Looking like an animal trapped in a small cage, Dean sputtered until he hit safer territory, "Smashing Pumpkins? Nine Inch Nails?"

Derek looked scandalized as he chuckled and managed to say, "Kid, you been holding out on me?"

"I had diverse tastes at a certain point—"

"And dude, if I had to hear one more Green Day album—"

Spencer just exploded, spluttering with a huge smile, "I was a college kid in the 90's! Birkenstocks were the footwear of choice and yes, I liked Red Hot Chili Peppers too!" He turned on Dean and just said, "At least I didn't end up in dreds listening to ska spring semester of freshman year."

Dean frowned. He looked to Derek. Derek shook his head like he wasn't even going near that. He looked back to Spencer. "Huh?"

Spencer's face whitened like he'd said something he shouldn't have. Damn it, he didn't even consider that they literally hadn't _seen_ one another until the night Dean broke into his apartment at Stanford five years ago. "Um . . . _Sammy_."

Dean's face dropped. "Wha—"

Spencer awkwardly nodded and turned, retreating to the window seat to drop in next to Derek. "Oh, dinner time yet?"

"Spencer?" Dean said sounding very stern.

He groaned. "Um . . . I didn't say—"

"Spencer?" And now Dean was just channeling every parent he'd ever embodied.

"He was missing you and Uncle John and . . ." he blew out his cheeks. "Homesickness in college manifests either as weight gain or a drastic change in appearance. He spent Christmas break alone, just moping. Jess called me during spring break and we kind of had an intervention."

Dean's mouth was wide. He had no idea what to even say. Was it wrong to know that Sam had missed him? To have actual proof of it? Granted . . . "Like, real dreds?"

Spencer swallowed hard and then said, "We had to shave his head."

With an uncontrollable snort of laughter Dean implored, "Tell me you have pictures."

Spencer let out a longsuffering sigh.

* * *

"I am so sorry General," David said, shaking the man's hand as he and his wife entered the reception room after they'd all said their hellos. "Castiel and Samuel were quite put upon by my Aunt Cecilia who was _absolutely_ assured that she had rights to them this evening."

"Ohh," the General said, looking appropriately disappointed. "Well, only way to rectify that situation is that you all _must_ have dinner with us tomorrow!" He smiled. Lady Tilney's face went from rosy to sheet white in a second. Derek looked at her and wondered if she'd pass out.

Nini, in a blue silk gown of silver shot taffeta went to her guests, took hands with Lady Tilney and guided her to the settee so they could have a nice chat before dinner was set on the table.

"Mrs. Campbell, I do hope our note didn't come too late to you. Harold was absolutely beset with business and I could not get an answer from him until he'd set about his letters. He honestly does believe that a cook can twirl her fingers and produce a meal with an hours notice."

"We were going to have more than enough to share so everything is right as rain," Nini said.

"Young Campbell," The General said to David as the rest of the young men stood just within the circle of discussion. "I heard from that old cock, Arnie Wallace, that our Winchester was seen at the Oriental this afternoon."

Dean, who had been sipping a bit of water from a glass, spluttered a little.

"Oh yes, sir. He was passing through on his way to Weymouth for the week-end."

"A shame. No one tells a tale like Winchester. Fine young man, fine young man," the General said. "But, yes, Weymouth before the weather becomes detestable, yes," he muttered. "And quite a turn from Brighton but the quiet will do him good." Turning his attention to the other guests, the General waved them over enthusiastically. "Don't think you all can hide from me; I want to know all of Mrs. Campbell's family. She is quite a pearl and it _would_ take Campbell to meet up with the only Italian girl in India!"

Derek almost choked on a snort. Spencer had to bite the inside of his cheek to contain himself.

The General looked Dean up and down and said, "Your ancestor was from the north of Italy, that's right?"

Ransacking Sara's memories of Mani, Dean offered, "Born and raised in Emilia."

The General still seemed pensive. Dean could tell his harpy wife must have gotten to him and filled him with doubts. Again crawling through Apsara's memories he said to the General, in that localized dialect of Hindi and Urdu, well-known to any officer who served in Mumbai, but the accent so familiar and the pronunciation so accurate as to only come from the lips of a native speaker, "But we've never been to Italy so," he shrugged. Spencer and Derek's cheeks tightened but they didn't show any reaction. Spencer considered if that meant he could do more than just read Latin now. He would have to try it as soon as possible.

Harold quickly turned to his wife and said, as if absolved, "Do you see, Bertha? Did you hear?"

"Now what is he going on about?" Lady Tilney asked with an exasperated sigh.

Wentworth entered the sitting room, going to his lady and announcing that dinner was served.

* * *

No one was quite sure how it happened, but by the end of dinner, Lady Tilney was giving Derek a personal invitation to take tea with her the next day. Everyone else, of course, was invited, but it was to Derek that she made the invitation.

"He is _such_ a charming young man," she said on her husband's arm as they waved goodbye from the sidewalk as they made their way just across the round to their home.

"Do you see now?" Her husband asked, holding her close to him, their voices disappearing through the kicking wind. "Spend a little time overseas and you'll know that people are peo . . ." his voice trailed off as they vanished into a rising fog.

Nini turned on Derek with a shocked look on her face, "How in the bloody blue blazes—"

"A gentleman never tells," Derek said, grinning.

Nini went to him and wrapped her arms about his middle, squeezing him. "Oh you beautiful man!"

Spencer looked around, "Where's Dean?"

David laughed, "Tormenting Sally to marry him, I think."

"I must admit," Nini began as she released Derek with a wide smile. Moving to David she took his arm. "That was one of her better meals."

Dean emerged from a back corridor with half a cherry tart in hand, the other half in his mouth. "Seriously, I don't even care if she is seventy," he said somewhere between ecstasy and amazement.

Nini dropped David's arm and, drawing up her skirts to make clearance for running legs, hurried past Dean to the corridor, "She never said she had tarts!"

Derek and Spencer looked to one another. Derek raised a brow. Spencer nodded. They turned and quickly followed Nini towards the staircase to the kitchen. Standing in the foyer with Dean, all David heard a moment later was a strong female Welsh accent exclaim—

"Old buzzards, the lot of ye!"

David looked to Dean who had somehow managed to store another tart somewhere on his person and was setting that one away as quickly as the first, and somehow managing to smile lopsidedly at the same time. David sighed. Yes, one day _that_ would be his wife.

* * *

"You have to do better," her father told her, holding out the smooth, steel-bladed knife. The little girl was about eleven or twelve and small for her age. Her dark blonde hair fell in a flat sheet around her head. Her dress was of a worn calico and her face was smudged with soot and dirt.

"Yes, father," she said, taking the knife with an abashed look on her face. She didn't want to disappoint him this time. Last time wasn't fair, they got interrupted before she could even start. She threw a stink look at her brother who stood beside her seeming rather pleased with himself. The boy was about nine or ten and wore a secondhand navy canvas jacket that was two sizes too large for him and workman's denims. His dirty and stringy hair was plastered to the sides of his face.

"Help her along," their father said, handing his son an identical knife. "I don't want to have to send her back for retraining."

The girl's eyes went wide and she tugged on her father's sleeve begging him, "No! Please, I'll do better, I'll remember!"

Her brother just laughed but her father took her by the shoulders and bent down, looking her in the eyes and said, "Repeat it."

As if she were just asked how to spell _chrysanthemum_ at a spelling bee, the little girl said, "Tips first."

"Why?"

"To scare them," she fanned her tiny hands. "Nerve endings at the tips. Pain goes everywhere."

"First souvenir?"

She wiggled her thumb, "First joint. They'll never forget, even if they survive."

"After that?"

"Ring finger."

"Conditions?" He said sternly.

She jumped up and down like she had to use the bathroom. "Oh, oh, sorry. Okay, yeah, no. Ring finger only if there isn't a ring. If there is a ring, leave it and go straight for the lifeline."

"How do you finish off the hand?"

"Vertical cut from wrist to elbow."

He smiled down at her and rose to standing, mussing her hair. "Do this right tonight and I won't have to send you back to Alistair."

Hiding a shiver, the little girl nodded, her all-black eyes glittering in the lamplight. She glanced over to her brother and stuck her tongue out at him and he just rolled his own pure-black eyes.

"Now settle down. You both did well in September but," he looked to his daughter, "only one of you got to the torso." The little boy snickered. Their father backhanded him across his face, his eyes blazing, "But neither of you retrieved the entire womb!" The children looked down to the floor. Their father gave them a conciliatory smile and quietly said, "Practice, practice. You'll get better. If you can do it all in these small suits then you can do it in anything. Tonight we're going to try for . . ." he encouraged.

"Ohh, ohh," the little girl raised her hand. "Mummy told me, mummy told me! The heart!"

Her father frowned down to her at that. "Lilith talks too much." They giggled. "Can anyone tell me why both of you will be working together for this one?"

The little boy raised his hands and said very carefully, "Be-because," he inhaled and then smiled, his cheeks coloring. "Because we have to get under the ribs and it's hard to break the sternum."

"There's my Saucy Jacky," his father smiled. The boy grinned.

"Ooh, ooh, can I write another letter, father?" The girl asked. "Maybe not another '_Dear Boss_' again. Or, oh, oh, yeah, another '_From Hell_?'" Both of the children giggled at the irony. The title had been quite literal when it had been written and no one knew.

"We'll see. If you get any good pieces of the liver we can wrap them up in it. How's that sound?"

The children both nodded vigorously.

"Okay. Put your faces on," he instructed and with a blink, both children's eyes turned from black to shades of light blue. Raking his hands through his hair, their father turned to the grime-covered mirror in the little boarding room he shared with the children and placed on his black hat, yellow ochre eyes gleaming in the firelight for a moment before turning a similar blue. No one could doubt that Azazel put a serious amount of time and effort into his children's education.

He turned to the young demons who would be the future Meg and Tom and he smiled, saying, "Let's go have an evening with our pretty Miss Mary."

* * *

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	20. Hibernaculum

**Chapter Twenty  
****  
****Hibernaculum**  


"God, I'm bored."

"Lord, how dull this is."

And yes, they had to say it at the same time. Dean and Nishtha sighed together and sagged against the sooty brick wall. Their group of five was divided into two: Derek and David on the west end of Dorset Street and Dean, Nini and Spencer were to the east, each observing the comings and goings of the passageway between No. 26 and No. 27 Dorset which led to Mary Kelly's lodgings in Miller's Court.

Their particular three-member party was positioned in the outer corona of an elevated gas lamp before the entrance of one of the many boarding houses that lined Dorset Street. The scenery of London had changed so much in that three and a half mile ride from Westminster to the Christ Church churchyard that Dean had wondered if they were even in the same country.

The late night hours were soon to transition to the early morning hours and as of yet, their impromptu stakeout was uneventful.

In response to their exaggerated sighs, Spencer rolled his eyes and muttered, "You're not helping." But he wore a grin anyway. He gestured out to the road where the hustle and bustle may not have been anywhere near 21st century standards but it was still a sight to be seen. Keeping track of all who passed demanded his full attention. He still wasn't even sure what he was looking for. Every two or three faces that approached the alleyway he would ask, "Him?" and either Dean or Nini would glance over and grumble, "No." Apparently his physical profile for demons was off. All that he'd read about them made them amorphous in his mind. What he had seen matched the profile he was working from. They seemed to mainly attach to vessels based on their personality. He took the idea of 'Jack the Ripper' and assumed that personality would be masked by whatever anyone's worst nightmare of that horror would be. "I suppose not," he sighed, nearing frustration after his nth rebuttal.

"Huh?" Dean asked with a yawn.

"What am I missing?" Spencer finally asked. "You and Nini obviously know."

"Oh, well, you're being kinda obvious," Dean replied. "Seriously, every guy you point out looks like a psycho-killer."

Spencer narrowed his eyes and frowned. "But . . ."

"_Psycho-killer_," Nini repeated, rolling it over her tongue, "I like that."

"I mean, all these guys look like they'd break the lens on a mug shot camera—"

"Mug shot?" She asked, a small bag of toffees in her hand.

Dean explained saying, "Get arrested, they take a picture of you."

"That's a brilliant idea. Must be very expensive though—" Dean gave her a small smile that was infinitely condescending. She thwaped his arm. "Alright, I suppose for _you _it wouldn't be." She popped a candy into her mouth.

"I know you didn't see Meg," Dean said, turning back to Spencer whose eyes were glued to every passerby. "But she's not exactly She-Hulk or Alpha-Female at an all-girl's prison—"

"I can't understand a word—" Nini said looking like she was trying to see very far into a dark room.

Spencer chuckled. "Dean, you'd be completely incomprehensible if we went back further than this."

"Hey, Marie understood me just fine—"

"_Marie_ was speaking French. Whatever she heard, just remember who was translating."

The thought passed through Dean's mind and a moment later he cringed. "Oh, right." He pondered that. Cas could barely understand everything he said on the best of days. Marie must have been hearing a load-full of gibberish.

"Point is, from my experience," Nini continued, "demon's lie. Rule number one."

Spencer nodded like a child who had been told for the fifth time that one plus one did in fact equal two. "Yes."

"Whoever 'Jack' is, he has all of London in a fear frenzy. He's cultivated that. Notes and letters, he wants to be seen. Any man large enough and imposing enough will be watched very carefully and with excess caution."

That was something Spencer understood very easily. She was describing Classic Misdirection. "I guess demons and pedophiles have a lot in common," he said to himself. Out loud he said, "So, the usual suspects would go against the profile?"

"Profile?" Nini asked and Dean let out a 'ha!' which was not at all noticed on the raucous street.

"I mean, he'll defy expectations?"

"Exactly. While you're focused on whichever man looks strong enough to break bricks between his palms, I'm watching the women," Nini said, passing the bag of candies to Dean. He took a few.

"Me, I'm watching grandpa over there," he said, suspiciously eyeing an octogenarian. "Shifty looking son-of-a-bitch.

Nini glanced to the old man and nodded, narrowing her eyes like she'd just seen a pickpocket in action. "Agreed. _Most_ suspicious."

Spencer looked from the old man, who seemed from all outward appearance to have lost use of perhaps every faculty he had other than standing somewhat upright, and then made a quick glance back to Dean and Nini. "Him?" He asked incredulously. "He looks like he's in end-stage liver failure."

"Don't make the suit fool you," Dean warned, reaching over Nini and yoinking the bag of candies from her. She flailed for it. "A demon can make a paraplegic do cartwheels." Nini hit a pressure point at his wrist and in less than a second Dean was muttering curses and she was ferreting away the rest of the snacks.

From the corner of his eye, Spencer watched them and he identified that sort of playful ease familiar to close family, even siblings. The same being in separate bodies and there they were acting like twin toddlers discovering the concept of 'mine' and the word 'no.' He didn't want to go deeper than the obvious fun they were having despite the seriousness overlaying their talk and present mission. He didn't want to know what it meant that they could connect, flesh to flesh, and the soul refused to merge.

"How can that even be possible?" Spencer asked but when he looked over to Dean again, he got that same calm and irritating '_seriously_?' look. "I—I mean, I guess, I suppose I mean, nerve endings and bones and muscles don't change . . ." he then thought about Dean and Sam's first altercation with Meg. She'd done a nosedive out a building, ended up flat on the pavement and then flounced away. When she was finally exorcised out of the human Meg Masters, all the torture the girl had been subject to was finally visited upon her in full and wretched force.

Dean watched Spencer's thought process zip over his face and nodded when he saw the conclusion come a moment later. "There we go."

"Demons change human physiology?" He asked but it was less question and more glaring observation. They must, he concluded. What other explanation was there for the existence of something like 'demon blood?'

Nini rubbed her eyes. It had been a long day for her. Exciting too and she'd never trade it but still, extremely long. "The body must be living, that is the only requirement. Beyond that, they can twist it beyond common imagination."

"And it's the soul that animates the body?" Spencer asked. "Like a driver?"

"Exactly. A demon requires a living body and so possession is the first option."

"The next option?" Spencer asked though he could guess. Hadn't Ruby taken possession of a living yet vacated body?

"Have you ever wondered why hospitals were so saturated with ghosts?" She asked.

Spencer was familiar with the trope but he was still too new to this world to have contemplated it. Mani had done precious little ghost hunting in his lifetime. Demons had been a new concept to his old self so his memories didn't help. Reid loved the macabre but only at an entertainment level, never having thought any of it was real.

"Wait, there's a reason?" Dean asked, astonished. "I thought it was because, you know, a crapload of dying."

Nini felt like a chef exchanging secrets with a colleague. "You would assume that but no, it seems that when a person is near death and their soul momentarily transitions, a demon will be waiting to inhabit. The soul had only released for a moment but when they try to return, they've been shut out. Having never really died, they're then attached to whatever of them remains on Earth. Lock of hair, baby tooth, anything like that. And of course, _where_ they've died."

Spencer was shocked and more than a little disgusted. "The demons just walk around in their bodies? They live their lives?"

Nini nodded, clearly impressed with her facts. "Always be wary of _miraculous recoveries_." She then looked to Dean, "Have you ever exorcised someone and they just fall down dead?"

"A couple of times. I figured their damage was just too much."

"Ha. Nope," she said, taking words she'd learned from him. "The soul will _always _occupy the body for at least a few moments after exorcism."

"That is so cool."

"Hmm," Spencer hummed, frowning. Meg Masters had been through the gamut after being possessed. With injuries like hers it was a wonder she was alive long enough to have a conversation.

"What?" They both asked.

"I'm kind of understanding why some people think I'm odd when I go on about statistics and random bits of information during something like a murder investigation." They frowned at him in question. "It runs in the family."

They shook their heads and looked up to the sky with longsuffering sighs like there was something wrong with him.

"So, the sigils on the arrows; how do they work?" Spencer asked.

Nini had her quiver and bow hidden in a large rucksack she wore on her back. With a smooth and careful move she pulled a small knife from her boot that was etched with the same markings. "Disrupts the connection between body and spirit, making the body human again. The demon will still have their powers but if they're in the body with the sigil embedded in them then they can be killed."

"So . . ."

"Always go for the kill shot. It's the same way when you battle vampires or shapeshifters or any other host of supernatural creatures. A bullet is a bullet but copper, silver and lead will not work on one creature the same way they will on another. With demons, you have to trap them in a body they cannot protect."

"But doesn't that mean the host . . ."

Almost cautiously, Nini admitted, "Yes. They die. The circumstance is a breeding ground for emotional and moral conflict but the bare fact remains that you cannot talk a demon out of a host. If they leave they will go elsewhere, either back to Hell with exorcism or to another host. Another host you must then, again, find. In the interim, you will have many more victims."

Dean nodded along with everything she'd said. "And listen, Spencer, I know the first time you have to make that choice you'll want to hesitate but the second you do they'll kill you or they'll be gone. They'll just disappear."

Spencer considered Tobias Hankel and, though he understood that there had been a demon inside of him masquerading as an avenging angel and thus, the gunshot he had aimed at him wouldn't have killed the demon, the truth was, when all was said and done, when all eyes were turned and evidence was being gathered away from the body, when the demon had seeped out and went on its way to plan more destruction, there remained the shell of a boy whose life had been completely destroyed. And although Reid hadn't known any of that at the time, though it was an elaborate scheme to break him, the truth remained that, like demonic possession, Spencer knew the person hurting him wasn't Tobias but rather a break in his psyche but he still took that shot.

He could rationalize it anyway he wanted to. Knowing what he knew now he knew that though there had been someone named Tobias Hankel, Spencer had never really met him. There had been a boy in Georgia chosen for the small fact that his life so mirrored Spencer's own. Truth or fiction, the fact remained that Spencer took that shot to save himself and he knew he would do it again.

Dean and Nini were right and it was true. The only consolation to be had in the entire sick situation was that the host was finally released.

It seemed like a logical flow of thought to consider the moment, if it ever happened, when he or Morgan faced Meg. Could they dare risk having her escape just to save the girl she held in bondage? Questions of this level of morality would never be answered by philosophers despite how hard the great thinkers tried.

In the end, demons knew hunters had to destroy them. Perhaps that was why Meg always chose young girls to inhabit, the first reminding Sam of Jess. It bred hesitation. Then there was Ruby, another young blonde at first, just to pull him in. Bobby's wife had become a target for the same reason: a loving husband would find it hard to kill his partner. And when Azazel took over Uncle John, what else was there for Dean or Sam to do _but_ pause? Meg's possession of Sam had almost destroyed Dean.

He didn't know why he said to Dean the thing he said next but as he watched a father walk down the road with his two small children he had to. "You couldn't do it to Lilith when she was in that little girl."

Lilith seemed to understand that of the Winchesters, at least of Dean, when she inhabited the body of a child. Perhaps that's why she chose the body of a woman, blonde again, to steady Sam's hand when she was first having doubts regarding her role in Lucifer's ascension.

Could Dean, the spiritual embodiment of motherhood, kill a child? Could Sam? The answer was clear: no, they couldn't. Spencer wondered if the same was true for himself. He didn't know if he should hope that he would or fear that he could.

"Yeah, well," Dean said, his voice a little empty. "Let's hope that's not a choice, like, _ever _again."

Something tingled inside Spencer and brought the hairs up on the back of his neck. His eyes tracked on the family of three and he held up his hand, "Wait . . ." All of London was in a state of fear over a man who kills his victims swiftly and viciously. Add to that the fact that there aren't ever any witnesses which leads one to think that the perpetrator must seem a regular of the Red Light District at the least. Large raucous men used to lives of hard living immediately come to mind, but . . . if everyone was looking out for that kind of person, who were they overlooking in the meantime?

Reid was moments away from joining two swiftly moving thoughts when the father and his children walked past the alleyway between No. 26 and No. 27 Dorset Street leading to Mary Kelly's home.

"What?" Dean asked, following his line of sight but only picking up on the following stream of regulars passing by.

"I—" Spencer began, looking to the receding figures. "I don't know."

* * *

"And what did we learn on our first canvass?" Azazel asked his children.

"The hunters are waiting for us," Tom replied with a dark frown.

"How do we resolve the situation?" Azazel asked his eldest.

Meg smiled glitteringly up to him and said, "We distract them?"

"Good girl."

* * *

David watched the crowd and glanced every so often to the space between No. 26 and No. 27. Mary Jane Kelly was slated to die that day and whether that would be fate's choice or not was not for him to consider. They were there to stop the Ripper and he honestly hoped that by doing so they could save her as well.

Derek was off to the side, a bit deeper into the shadows of a lodging house. As cosmopolitan as London was, even in 1888, the sight of a black man in the center of Whitechapel would cause an undo amount of attention.

During the stakeout, Morgan, like Reid, was boning up on his hunter's education, but, unlike Reid, Derek was nursing a growing headache. He knew why. He'd seen the looks the kid and Dean had exchanged all night. Cas had been gone hours now and it seemed like every time Derek closed his eyes all he could see was that dark, angry glare.

"Are you feeling worse?" David asked, his attention remaining on the crowd but Morgan felt like the man had eyes at the back of his head. Or maybe it was a psychic thing. Hadn't Reid told him some of Sam's history? The soul David and Sam shared, like the soul Dean, Marie, Sara and Nini or Reid and Mani shared, each had the potential to change the world. Why couldn't it also be likely that David could intuit something like a headache?

Rubbing at the pain, Derek just grumbled, "No," even though it was a 'yes.'

"Of course not," David said just as convincingly.

Changing the subject, Derek asked, moving on with their previous conversation, "But, they can teleport, just like angels, right?"

"Teleport?"

"Move around in the blink of an eye?"

"Ah. Yes."

"Then how do we know Jack's not already there?"

David chuckled a little. "It would be a losing battle if demons could just pop around wherever they wanted to. Any dwelling that has been lived in has something called a _threshold_. The more people, the more power. The more family history, the more power. Since Ms. Kelly lives as a boarder and alone, the threshold of her particular room will be minor but the house in general will, because of all the combined souls, have a strong one. Whoever Jack is, he must approach her home as a person, in the flesh and he can only enter if his presence is acknowledged."

"For a second I thought you were going to say demons had to be invited in," Morgan said.

"Oh yes, that old wives tale. Vampires, like any other feral creature, do not need an invitation to kill you. Demons however are spirit creatures, not flesh and blood. They don't need an invitation but you do need to know they are there before they can enter your home."

Derek thought back to Meg, standing before his front door. She'd had the power and strength to blow it off its hinges but instead she knocked.

"If you are not expecting someone, do not answer your door. If you do not recognize a voice calling out to you in the dark, do not call out to it. Answering a question on the street is a common entryway as well. When they are ready to switch bodies, telling someone the time is an invitation. When a demon receives their first host out of Hell, a sleeping mind combined with an open door or an open window and a lack of totems is all they need. Summer is the worst time of year for possession but not quite so bad in a large city where most doors would be locked. Small towns or villages? I don't even want to discuss what goes on in hamlets in the summer."

"Hmm," Derek pondered that. He'd have to ask Dean if the majority of his cases were located in small towns. It didn't seem too unbelievable. It was true, in his work, that serial killers made national news if they were active in large cities but Morgan knew that the majority of the BAU serial cases never made it to national news. Regional, perhaps, but hardly anything approaching the coverage of the D.C. Sniper, the Son of Sam or Charles Manson.

Derek refused to draw too many parallels however. There were other, more logical reasons for serial murder to occur in a small town versus a large city. He didn't have to bring demon possession into the equation.

Though . . . If the creature that had attacked JJ and Henry had gotten away with it and vanished, wouldn't he have concluded it was a human criminal? If his attack turned into a signature with more victims, wouldn't his team say it was a serial killer? How many murders in the pile of files on JJs desk had been committed by something nonhuman? How many people, trapped inside their own body had watched as others were killed? How many of those people had been placed in that situation merely because they had a trusting spirit, didn't have a superstitious nature and had left a window open on a warm night?

"That's ridiculous," he finally managed to say though he _wanted_ to say, 'Bullshit.'

"Demons, having once been human, are free under _implied consent_. Angels need _explicit consent_. I didn't make the rules," David sighed. "Let's just be glad they can't, what was it? _teleport_, wherever they wanted to."

"Sorry. I just mean—how do you fight them knowing they're in the skin of a person who didn't ask for any of it?"

"It's difficult, of course it is, but surely to do nothing is worse. Far worse. Exorcism is the best option to save the vessel but Hell isn't a secure prison. They escape. They always escape. Add to that the fact that if you don't act to contain them, they can be gone in a moment."

Derek took a deep breath and folded his hands. The lesson in all of this was, as he could tell, that to survive as a hunter you had to be one paranoid, hard-nosed, son-of-a-bitch. He kind of understood Bobby a little better just then.

For so long he'd thought his level of seeing and understanding the world in all its horror and darkness was as deep as understanding could ever be but the shadowy recesses of the human mind was virgin territory compared to what they had seen so far, what he'd lived through so far. Anyone can kill, anyone can hate, few can enjoy it and even fewer can desire it and relish in it. That was the depth of the comprehension of human evil. It was a new experience for him to become aware of beings whose only purpose was to enact and _enable_ any form of harm that they could. That their end game was the subjugation or annihilation of the human race. Could you negotiate with such a creature? If you even tried to, what would that then make you?

Derek Morgan had been a member of the Chicago P.D. He'd been a member of the bomb squad. He'd earned his J.D. from Northwestern University. He'd been a member of the BAU for over a decade as his team's fixation and obsessive behaviors expert. In short, he understood high-tension situations, he had a foundation in logic and he knew how the mind could twist and turn. He wasn't ignorant to the fact that people suffered and died unnecessarily all the time. When he'd first discovered that to get a good profile you often needed a multiple body count or repeat offenses he was disgusted but he eventually came to understand that it was his job to end the cycle of violence but to never blame himself for being unable to prevent it.

This was the lesson he had to re-learn. The next time he faced a demon he would have to look beyond the eyes staring at him and understand what was within it. If he ever came face to face with Meg again, this time it would be with the complete knowledge that the body belonged to an innocent girl and that her soul was trapped inside of it. He would have to make a choice; he would have to make a decision. Could he do to her what he'd sworn he'd do to the creature that held her prisoner, knowing the action would affect them both?

"Derek?" David called to him, darting a quick and yet understanding glance from behind Sam's eyes and he said quite earnestly, "If you think on it too hard you won't survive. Act. Do. If you must regret, regret afterwards." Morgan had no idea that the same soul telling him this would, in its very next life, compromise itself out of that concern for others. Yes, there were other motivations if Sam had truly been honest with himself but at the core was the desire to remove demons while saving _people_. It would be a lesson forgotten at birth by a young man who had been faced with trials that were never meant to be his own. Sam would walk down that well-intentioned road wanting to save the world from darkness.

Morgan nodded. "I'll do what I have to do." A pain at the back of his neck emerged. He had no idea how much longer he could wait. Would he even last until daybreak before the horror flashing through his mind in spurts and fits finally took root?

"What the—" David swore as a terrible scream tore through the darkness, catching the attention of everyone on that autumn night. David's face seemed to fall, very slightly at that moment, as if he knew something had just happened, as if something had changed for the worse. He looked to Derek with a sad resolution and said, "Go to the others. Call if I'm needed." With a nod, Morgan ran along with every other curious onlooker towards the churchyard end of Dorset Street.

"Stay here," Nini said, lightly touching Spencer's shoulder. From so far away no one could see how much her expression mirrored her husband's. "Keep your focus on that passageway." Spencer acknowledged her and kept a lookout on the entrance to Miller's Court. With Dean by her side, Nini ran towards the commotion.

* * *

"Two stayed behind," Tom observed, his small face looking up to the ochre eyes of his father. Deep in the shadows they watched the scene as people raced down the street to the screams and more hung out the windows, eager for news.

Meg tilted her head to the side and staring down the street to the beautiful distraction they caused, she hummed, "What does it matter? The others are going to be _so_ occupied." She tugged on her father's hand. "Can we have one, father?" She asked, turning up the street to one of the hunters watching the passageway. She had ever so many ideas already swimming through her little head about that one. She wondered what those bright eyes would look like if she replaced the brown with green sea glass.

"Later," Azazel cooed. "Later."

She pouted and dug a toe against the brick of the sidewalk.

Drawing her up into his arms he leaned his forehead against hers and whispered, "But, if they follow us to pretty Miss Mary's, then you _know _I couldn't stop you."

She squealed and wrapped her arms around his neck, giggling madly. Tom just held onto his father's jacket and swung back and forth as children do.

* * *

"Oh my Lord," came the nearly overwhelming and resounding echo from all those gathered. "Someone, get him down!" A woman screamed. "Charlie! Bring a ladder!" A man shouted. "He's turning blue!" Several people observed.

Dean, Nini and Derek ran through the assembly and followed the general line of sight up to about fifteen feet above the ground where a boy, no older than fourteen or fifteen was hanging by a thick rope, his legs in the final stages of twitching. His face, illuminated by the lamplight, was a ghostly grey-blue and his eyes were wide and streaked with red. The noose was tied off to what seemed to be a rail or a runoff pipe on the sheer side of an ancient carriage house. There was no way the kid had gotten up there on his own.

"How on earth did he get up there?" Many in the crowd wondered. "The rope dropped out of the sky!" Another person screamed. "Plucked him like a fish in a net!"

"Nini!" Dean called, tapping Derek as they pushed through the crowd and reached the base of the building.

"Got him!" She responded, whipping her bow from the rucksack and drawing out an arrow. In the low light and in all that commotion, Nini let an arrow fly. Severing the rope, the boy was released and sent falling to the ground. Dean and Derek grabbed a hold of him before he could land on the stone. The action so shocked those around them that there was a collective gasp. The people before Nini cleared way and let her pass. Dean was pulling off the rope as Derek looked the boy over.

"He's not breathing," Derek said. The crowd was moving in on a crush as they heard that. He looked over to Dean. "Get them back."

Dean nodded and jumped up. "Get back—"

The crowd pushed in. Nini had to crawl through the last few people just to get to them.

"Space!" Derek shouted, tilting the boy's head back, clearing his airway.

"I said get back!" Dean tried again. From the rucksack, Nini threw Dean a pistol. She held out her own weapon and from the previous display of her marksmanship the crowd took a few steps back. Dean looked down to the decoratively carved silver revolver. It was a Colt Single-Action. The etchings were identical to those Nini and Sara used on their bows and arrows but the gun itself was a later model twin to his own Colt.

"You have _got_ to be kidding me," he said quietly in surprise to himself before quickly raising the gun on the crowd. He'd left the Colt back at the house in pure dread that something like a misfire, however unlikely as it would happen, especially with him, could change the 1888 timeline. He chanted to himself while holding out the weapon, '_don't shoot them, don't ruin history. Anything you do, just look like a hardass but just don't ruin history_.'

The moments passed like epochs but soon the sound of gasping choking inhalations was heard. Everyone's eyes went to the red-faced boy who was struggling to take in breath after breath but he was breathing.

Nini turned away from the crowd and bent over the boy and looked to Derek. Pulling her small knife again she first locked a look with Morgan and with a swift and light touch she brought the blade over the tip of one finger. Other than shock, he didn't react. "Good," she muttered. Looking to the boy she did the same. He didn't even to seem to notice through his gasps. "Good," she repeated. "Can you understand me?" She asked him. He nodded, rather than risk speaking. "Where is your home?" He looked around, lost. She studied his clothing closely in the light. He was well groomed, well fed and healthy. His clothes were clean and other than being roughed up on the ground, they were new. That's when she saw it and huffed out in aggravation. "Harrow?" She exclaimed, looking at the badge on his coat. "That's nearly fourteen miles!"

"So sorry, miss." he croaked, his _s's _slipping with the sound of a faint lisp.

"It's _ma'am_ and you are going to get a _very_ stern talking to young man," she said sounding very cross. The boy flinched at her words. She looked up to Derek who nodded and with ease he brought the boy up to a wobbly stance. It was clear to them all that the demon had used this as a distraction. He had almost killed a child just to pull them away from their watch. Now they had a boy, miles from where he belonged, in their custody for the present who clearly couldn't do much of anything, not even stand. He'd been attacked that night which meant he'd been marked. He'd left himself open somehow. The demon would be able to find him wherever he was until sunrise burned off its smell. At least one of them would _have_ to stay with him. This was the choice the demon gave them: watch him die or save him and baby-sit him until sunrise. _Perfect_.

She didn't want to think it was too late but . . .

The boy had been marked. He had the scent of whatever demon Jack the Ripper really was all over him. She could—Nini looked up to the sky. The sun was a little more than an hour out from rising. Once it was up, the trail would be gone.

"Dean, Derek, go back to David and Spencer—"

"I'm not leaving you—"

"I can handle myself—"

"Not with that kid you can't—"

Derek swung the boy up into his arms and made the decision before they started to bicker. "I've got him. It's not like I can help you anyway," he said to Dean. He also didn't want to admit that with the fire raging in his head at the moment, he'd likely be a hindrance.

Dean looked between the two of them and knew there wasn't any arguing the point. "Okay, meet us _right back here_," Dean said in a tone of command.

"Yes, meet us back at the house," Nini edited, turning and moving through the crowd towards the tramway by Christ Church to catch a coupé back to Westminster. "Tell David we have a _terminus_!" Derek looked to Nini's moving form and then to Dean and shrugged before following her through the people.

Dean looked to the group around him. He lamely smiled and glanced up to the torn rope above. "That was . . . _weird_. . . yeah." Turning to go back to Spencer and David, he didn't even try to explain what had just happened.

* * *

Spencer watched the passageway, his attention never failing. Through the people racing past, gripped as they were in fear of a mysterious killer and hearing sounds that all spoke 'bloody murder,' if he had blinked for just one second he would have missed it. Moving with a casualness and calm that defied the present atmosphere, Reid spied that father and his two children walk past and slip into the space between No. 26 and No. 27. His previous doubt immediately took firm shape and he understood, completely, what that man and those children were and why 'Jack the Ripper' had never been witnessed.

Neither child could have been past ten they were so small. An immediate sense of sickness passed through Spencer but he finally received his answer to that impossible question. He had to stop them.

Racing out through the passing crowd, he waved down the block towards David. Moving with the speed only granted to a person who was both a military man and a hunter of fallen angels, David ran to him as Spencer broke through into the darkness between the two buildings.

Dean, clearing through the people just in time to see David dart into the passageway, was close at his heels.

In the rough-lit overcast of Miller's Court, Spencer, with David and Dean coming up from behind, saw the door to the small room open. The light from within illuminated the group ahead, father flanked by small children. The hunters never saw her, Mary Jane Kelly, blocked as she was by the wall. It was over in a moment as the demons' presence was acknowledged and an entry was opened to them. They entered with remarkable speed and the door slammed shut behind them.

"No!" Spencer screamed, long legs crossing the distance in a few strides. Muffled screams could be heard from within but with the street in such an uproar, no one could have heard it but them. Dean and David both tried to kick down the door but something was reinforcing the brittle wood. Spencer attempted to smash the windows but they wouldn't break. Beyond their grimy film, he could see very little except the definite movement of struggles.

"They've sealed it," David said, trying the door again.

Spencer felt frozen. He felt absolutely paralyzed. Beyond that door, beyond that single-pane glass was being painted a scene from his memory. Suddenly images of Derek, not a few days ago, passed over his eyes. It was happening again.

Dean considered the gun in his hand and a stream of hunter's logic passed through his mind that if it could disrupt a demonic connection to its host it could possibly disrupt the connection the demon had over the room but that was checked by the acceptance that what he held in his hand was still a gun. A bullet ricochet could kill her just as quickly as a demon could. He pushed the gun into the back of his waistband and felt every pocket, a use for every item passing through his mind but nothing was going to help her. Nothing was going to—_the key_. Chuck's key. It was still on its string. It had been hanging right there waiting for him on His front door. It was a regular modern nickel-plated brass affair that could never pass as a contemporary iron latchkey but, given whose key it was, given the dearth of solutions to the situation, it only took Dean a split second to say _fuck all_ before he pushed it into the lock.

It turned.

It released.

The latch opened.

He didn't wait to acknowledge the looks of surprise from Spencer and David as he threw open the door just in time to see what was left of Mary Jane Kelly being ravaged by two small children. Black eyes darted up to him, their bodies twisted and crouched into feral positions, their arms up to the elbows covered in blood as the little girl held a human heart in her tiny hands.

There was a moment of shocked surprise between both parties of three. Dean, Spencer and David processing the gruesome sight and Azazel, Meg and Tom trying to grasp how it was possible the hunters had broken through their control.

Dean would still be arrested by the scene before him if he hadn't turned in horror and disgust from the children to the man standing off to the side observing them like a lifeguard in summer. Those yellow-ochre eyes were the same every time.

"Azazel—" Both Dean and David whispered but only Dean unconsciously opted not to shout out, 'You Yellow-Eyed Son-of-a-Whore-Bitch!'

It was that single word that broke the spell all around them. Without moving a muscle, without moving a hair, the demons disappeared. All that remained was an eviscerated young woman, her blood warm on the walls.

* * *

"How's your throat feeling?" Nini asked the boy as he walked under his own power into the drawing room. The ligature marks on his neck were darkening as the minutes passed and his eyes were bloodshot but he was breathing regularly.

"Better, ma'am," he croaked.

"So, what's your name then?" She asked, setting him down on a settee as Wentworth brought a tray with water to drink, ointment and bandages. Derek set himself to wrapping the wounds at the child's neck. He needed to keep himself occupied, keep his hands moving. It was the only way to keep the other, darker thoughts at bay.

"Um . . . Spencer, ma'am. Spencer Hill?" Nini and Derek looked to one another with doubtful and still, curious looks.

"You don't seem too sure about that."

"Sorry, miss, I mean, ma'am, but, I'm going to be in so much trouble if the Porker—I mean, headmaster Welldon, finds out." With his lisp, he seemed even younger than his height would imply.

"How old are you, Hill?" Nini asked.

"Fourteen, ma'am."

"And what business does a fourteen year old from Harrow have in the East End at this time of night?"

"Not much business, ma'am," he replied which, Derek had to admit, was a good answer. "But—but I wanted to see. Everyone's talking of it. I really wanted to see what a place where murder like that could happen. I had one picture in my head and then when I got off the tram it wasn't at all what I thought it would be. Then I . . . I got lost and I couldn't get up enough nerve to ask how to get back. Everyone looked at me as if I didn't belong there, and I knew didn't, but I felt so bad. I finally saw the churchyard and I thought I could go back to school when . . . I don't know what happened," he shook his head and looked down. He turned back up to them both, tears in his eyes. "I felt as if I've died."

Nini sat down next to him and put an arm around him, her harsh tone softened. She rubbed his shoulder and said, "You just nearly did. But, you're good now, alright?"

He sighed. "They always say I'm wicked or naughty. I don't try to be. I'm _interested_. I'm curious. I feel things people don't . . ." he trailed off as if he's said something he shouldn't have. That piqued their interest. There was something about him, about young _Spencer Hill_, which was more than what met the eye.

Nini looked to the clock and knew they didn't have time just then but they would later. They had to begin. "Hill, I know there are things you're not saying. I can see there are things you want to say but can't. I won't force you but I think if I'm honest with you, you'll understand what I'm telling you."

"Ma'am?" He asked, inquiringly.

"Tonight a darkness passed over you. It left a mark that's fading. We need to find the mark and call the darkness so we can get rid of it."

The boy frowned but he didn't react in the way someone should have reacted. Instead of confusion, he was pondering.

"You mean evil, don't you?"

"What do you know of evil, Hill?" She asked though the response seemed to be something she expected.

"I felt it tonight. I feel it sometimes. That's why I went to Whitechapel. I knew I could feel him out—"

"Jack?" Morgan asked.

He nodded. "But the entire place was . . . _sadness_. Not evil, just so much sadness. It confused me. Turned my head. I couldn't see how people could live like that, how they couldn't feel it."

Nini gave his shoulder another squeeze before replying, "Trust me, they can."

He shook his head, "And then it was just on me. That feeling of evil but it was just so strong. I don't know what could feel so hateful but it couldn't just be one. There was no chance anyone but Satan himself could have that much hate."

She frowned at that and worried over what he told her. Derek finished with the bandages and nodded to her.

"Alright. I need you to believe me when I say I will not hurt you and I will be sure that no one will. Do you?"

He nodded.

Nini gave him a smile, "You can feel that I'm telling the truth, can't you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She'd only heard of this kind of intuition before but she'd never seen it. She had to push her fascination aside. She looked up to her butler, "Wentworth?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Ring the bell; we'll need all the hands we can get."

"Are we clearing the furniture, ma'am?"

"Yes, we most certainly are."

* * *

"A terminus?" Spencer asked as they rode together in a brown coupé back to Westminster. There was no life to his voice. They'd just left her there, unnoticed by anyone but them, Dean locking the door behind him. History intact and a young woman annihilated. He was honestly questioning the point behind all of this, every last moment of this.

"When a demon attacks someone it's like a dog marking its territory. A new day burns off the scent so if the boy you're talking about was marked, he has Azazel's scent on him. A living link to the demon. Mostly they use it to track back to a victim that may have gotten away but we can use it to lure the creature."

Dean understood what he was talking about. Whenever he and Sam or Bobby had fought with demons, they seemed able to track their every movement like something out of a horror movie. He had no idea there was a name for it.

"How did she know?" Spencer asked, trying to be a part of the conversation but feeling like he was failing miserably. He couldn't imagine how Nini knew they wouldn't catch the Ripper.

"From the moment we had to split up," David said. "It was a coordinated distraction. We had to make a choice and we did. It was the boy or the girl but it couldn't be both."

It had been on Spencer to watch the passageway and he'd moved as fast as he could but it wasn't fast enough. How could splitting up have affected that? That's when he considered Nini and her arrows and wondered, if she'd been watching the street instead of him, Mary Kelly would have been alive but from what Dean said, the boy would never have gotten off the rope in time. When David said 'we' had to make a choice, he meant Nishtha had made the choice.

Spencer looked between David and Dean and saw that they'd both understood that long before he did. "How did she know?" He repeated but the words had so much more meaning.

"In your timeline, the world went on without Mary Jane Kelly. Destiny had already taken her—"

"We can't think about it like that—" Spencer argued, his voice sharp.

"No, Spencer, we shouldn't have to but we have to. Nini had to save the boy, he was the unknown factor. However history plays out, for some reason he had to live tonight."

And it fell into place. "And then history also said that Mary Kelly was the Ripper's last victim."

"Exactly. So the boy then becomes the vehicle to that end. We will get them tonight."

Spencer leaned back in the carriage and turned his face out to the window. "Well . . . it's all very neat," he said, still seeing the girl's blood painting her walls. "Except, if that really was Azazel—"

"Kid—" Dean began, hearing the heat rise in Spencer's voice.

"If that _was_ Azazel," he continued, "Does that mean one of those kids was Meg? Nini doesn't know that 'Jack' is actually _three_ demons. Is she even prepared for that? Morgan doesn't know that the thing that almost killed him is in the body of a little girl. Dean, if we're going to be so _secure_ that destiny and fate is going to keep the past safe then don't we already _know_ that those demons aren't going to be killed tonight? In terms of _history_ keeping people safe, the only person in that house who won't be is Morgan."

Dean Campbell closed his eyes and reviewed the last few days. Day One he gets a call from Bobby taking him from his home, his woman and his kid. Day Two he gets shot through the gut, finds out his kid brother is not in Hell and has been turned into an angel, finds out that the Apocalypse was _still on_, finds out his childhood friend is actually his long lost cousin and of course, finds his long lost aunt, and, oh yeah, he meets God and then travels back in time to meet a past incarnation of himself who happens to be a girl then meets pure evil incarnate. Day two was very full. Nothing compares to Day Three though. Day Three he meets another incarnation of himself, becomes her and then . . . well, long night that doesn't really need to be re-verbalized. Day Four has him meet yet another female incarnation of himself and at this point Dean's sure he's the only one not in on the cosmic joke when, _hello_ Demon Jack the Ripper and _double hello_, Demon Jack the Ripper is actually also Demon Who Killed My Mom, My Dad (twice), My Grandma and My Grandpa. Now was the beginning of Day Five which, Dean had to admit, was off to a flying start with the potential murder of his cousin's best friend, who was also growing on Dean as a friend as well.

Day Five was not going to suck.

"He'll be fine," Dean said, leaning back and keeping his eyes closed.

"You can't promise that—"

"Ha."

* * *

"Bobby showed me one of these in his basement," Derek said, looking at the inlaid wood floor of the unused ballroom in No. 20 Hanover Square. "His was _definitely_ smaller."

"Everyone is always asking us why we never throw parties. Could you picture Anglicans dancing to Ivanovici on this?" She asked with a grin.

The floor, which was covered every other day of the year with carpets and furniture had been cleared, the room made completely barren and all the lamps lit to reveal the distinctive pattern engraved into the floor with many different solid blocks of wood making a beautiful glossy palette of earth tones. The blocks formed a large pentacle.

"A devil's trap," Morgan said, looking up to the ceiling were a brushed brass reflective surface doubled the image.

"The wood is a foot thick and enameled. It won't chip or crack. Michael gave it to us as a wedding present. He really is so sweet."

Spencer Hill stared open-eyed at the large symbol. He'd never seen anything like it. He'd read a lot on witchcraft and the dark arts but what he felt coming off of Nini and Derek and all the other people in the household didn't align with all he'd learned.

"Don't let it frighten you," Nini said, looking to him.

"It's for the evil?" Hill asked.

"It's a prison. Prison is always a little scary, right?"

"It should be," young Mr. Hill replied and again, Derek thought that was a very good answer. "So, you're going to trap the evil in this and then, what?"

"Destroy it," Nini replied, pulling an arrow from the quiver. "The breadcrumbs are laid. All we have to do now is wait," she said. However, as soon as she spoke, the very moment she blinked, she felt like she had moved to a completely different place. The ground was being jostled under her in that familiar motion of a carriage over stone. She looked to her right and saw Spencer and she looked before her and saw David. Looking down to her hands she saw clearly that they were both hers and not hers. Thoughts began to race through her so quickly that when her eyes opened again she couldn't believe that the blink had only just been a blink.

"Wentworth!" Nini cried out. Derek and Hill shot their gazes to her.

The butler immediately appeared at the doorway.

"Get the exorcism kit!" She commanded as she went into the hall and down the stairs to the servery by the dining room.

"Nini?" Derek said to her from still inside the ballroom.

"It's Azazel—" She began, returning to the ballroom and rushing around the room with a canvas bag filled with soot and a large ancient earthenware jar filled with Jerusalem holy oil. On every inch of wall she could touch she marked small crosses and strange symbols onto the fine wallpaper. She cursed herself for not having another room laid out with a triquetra. Anglicans would be fascinated by that at least. She couldn't risk doing the banishment ceremony herself in her condition but they had Dean, Spencer and David who could complete the circle. It could have been their chance to destroy Azazel for all of time but now . . .

"Azazel?"

"He's a fallen but he burned all of his grace as a sacrifice of devotion to his father—"

"His father?"

Nini paused for just a moment to look back at both he and Hill. "Lucifer. Lucifer is his father. The creation of Azazel was essentially _the _sin that removed Lucifer from Heaven. Angels don't procreate. It's a gift only given to mortals, beings who would eventually die. By what he did, Lucifer tried to be like God. He was going to build his own army, flesh of his flesh."

Derek hurried to her and following her direction, painted ash symbols all across the room. "So, he resented that angels weren't allowed to have kids but something like an amoeba could?"

She didn't want to laugh but the sheer absurdity forced her to. "Yes, but even more so that humans, created with consciousness and self-awareness, like God and the angels, also could. Of the three, only angels weren't allowed to. He openly defied God by creating Azazel and then encouraged all the other angels to do the same. When Michael led the battle against him, all of the fallen lost the ability to self-create."

"So that's why they had to go after human women?"

"Yes. Azazel is the only demon with the '_honor'_ of having Yellow-Eyes; it marks him as the son of the _Morning Star_. He's an angel who is no longer an angel and a demon who was never human. His power is . . . _difficult_ to assess. I can't trust my bow. It may work, it may not, but if I try and fail I will have broken the circle."

"How do you—"

She pointed to her forehead. "Dean showed me. Azazel and his children, the three of them, are _Jack_."

"Wait, three? Can you handle three?"

". . . of course," she said a little too brightly.

"My confidence is rising," he said sounding the perfect opposite. "Should I get the kid out of here?"

"No, the scent is on him. They will follow him. This is the only place he's safe."

Wentworth moved quickly into the room carrying a large leather bag which he unfurled on the ground by the outer circle of the pentacle before he left again. Nini went through the bag, collecting what she would need. "Salt doesn't work on him; Holy Water doesn't work on him. In some respects he's more powerful than demons of a higher hierarchy but because he was never human—"

"I don't have a bellybutton," a voice said, startling them. Nini, Derek and Hill all looked up to see a man in the clothes of someone grievously poor with two small children by his side. The man at center looked on them with bright yellow eyes while the two children gazed on with empty black ones. "I so wanted one too."

The two children looked over to Hill. They both smiled vicious little smiles at the same time. The little girl spoke to him, her voice lilting and merry. "You want to play? I know such a good game."

The children were covered in blood. Hill hid behind Morgan.

_Kids_. Derek stared at them. They were just . . . kids. Under of all that blood and gristle-covered flesh were two children who were probably screaming for help but who had no hope of being heard.

Hill tugged on Morgan's arm and caught his gaze. "This is what I felt before. It's them. It's awful," he whispered. Morgan nodded, solidifying his stance before the boy and feeling it settle in place just then. Those were children, yes, but so was Hill and it was Derek and Nini's job to make sure Hill was safe. The pain behind his temples was easing.

"I don't want her to hurt them, Mr. Morgan," Hill quietly said. "I can feel it better now. The evil is in them but it isn't _them_, is it?"

"No. They're—" Could he, _should he_, tell the boy all of this? He accepted what Nini had told him before and decided to trust him with the truth. "They're possessed."

Hill accepted that as the truth with no amount of convincing necessary. Whatever intuition that was evident he had allowed him to sense honesty and whatever skill he had at sensing character and intent was strong. The family he was looking at had been taken over by demons.

Azazel tapped his foot on the wood. "Fancy."

Nini lightly shrugged. "I try."

"This has been an exciting night, why ruin it with parlor tricks, my dear?"

"Oh, I'm not a magician but in a past life I was a witch," she smiled.

"And in my next life," a voice came from the ballroom double doors, "I kick your ass." Dean walked into the room, Nini's Colt and his own in his hands. David and Spencer came up behind him.

"Thank God," Nini said in an exhalation of relief. "I hate chit-chatting with demons."

Dean smirked, mentally noting, 'me too, sister.'

Spencer went over to Morgan and the boy they must have saved. Dean took up another corner of the ballroom and David went to Nini as they completed the circle.

Azazel brushed a speck of lint from his filthy jacket and hummed, "So now we wait for you to figure out what to do with us? Might take all day as exorcism doesn't really work on me and my children are very attached to their little suits."

Dean checked the sky out the window as it lightened. "Or we can wait for our angels to show up."

Azazel's hand stilled as his children's faces immediately looked up to him in fear. "Shhh," he quietly said to them, patting their shoulders, calming them. "Everything will be alright." He looked up to the hunters again, a shadow of respect falling over his features. The children clutched onto him, terrified. "Angels will burn them. They're only children."

"Morgan?" Spencer whispered to Derek as they stood in their corner while the demons were turned to the others. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Morgan said and he felt that it was true. The conflict and the pain and the memories seemed to diminish when he was faced with the very present danger before him and the protection of Hill set to him. He wondered if hunting would forever be like this for him? Forced to keep moving, keep saving people, keep hunting things, just to push away the darkness always at the borders of the mind? He wondered how Dean had fared when he set down the hunt those months ago to settle down with his girl? He wondered if he'd been plagued with these dark thoughts? Even nightmares? "I know demons lie but he's really protective of those kids," Morgan observed, almost to himself but Spencer heard him.

"They're his children," Spencer replied before realizing what he'd said. It was almost an invitation for more information and he didn't know if he could tell Morgan who the demon, perhaps in that little girl, was. That thought went through him and was decided on its way out. "Tom and . . . and Meg."

And Derek reacted in a way he didn't expect; in a way he couldn't even fathom. There was shock, yes, surprise, yes. Anger at the revisited mention of the thing, of course but the passionate hate was aimed at the memory and knowledge of the monster but not at the children. In his mind, Morgan had fully separated one from the other. He unconsciously positioned himself more securely in front of Hill who was peeking at the scene from behind him. In doing so, Derek understood that no matter what, he would protect the one he could and sacrifice himself to anything that came his way, even if it meant a repeat of what happened before. In his shift and acceptance, Derek Morgan became a hunter.

"And that is why you chose those bodies," David said, responding to Azazel. Azazel allowed himself a grin of the caught.

"You got me. But, they're excellent training vessels, don't you think? Younger and younger every year until their skills are perfect. This was their finals. I think I can give them high marks. It's taken such a while but now they can eviscerate in less than a minute flat."

"Keep talking," Dean said. "You're making this so easy."

"Will it be? To watch the children inside of them burn to dust?"

The room became deathly silent.

"You could however let them go. We can leave these bodies and be on our way. Save this poor family," he smiled.

An idea passed over Dean and he quickly gathered that it could work. He would need Nini's help. Reaching back, into the connection they shared, Dean closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again, Nini was pulling her bow from behind her and she took two arrows into her hands.

"You get out of them and we break the circle, letting you go?" Nini asked. David turned to her, doubting his wife had gone mad but needing some confirmation. He received it by the look of assurance she gave him. He glanced to Dean who holstered one of the weapons behind him and took careful, low aim. Derek and Spencer looked to the three of them and knew there had to be a plan beyond 'let them escape.'

"You can't exorcise us outside of our hosts and you can't get to the meat without breaking the circle. So this is a fair compromise, don't you think? An extension of trust."

Hill quietly said to Derek, "But you can't negotiate with evil, can you?"

Looking down to the boy, Derek shook his head, years of profiling informing his opinion. "No, you can't. You never can."

"Alright," Nini said. "Deal."

Azazel smirked and in unison, he and his children opened their mouths and cyclones of black erupted from their lips. The second the last wisps of demonic energy left their lips, breaths before the hosts bonelessly fell to the ground, Dean raised his Colt and capped the father in the knee. Nini sent off a dual arrowshot, hitting the children in their shins with alarming accuracy. The bodies fell to the ground, clearly exhausted and moans of pain and the start of wails began from the now free children and their father. The swirling vortex of energies spun faster and faster, bound as they were by the seal embedded in the floor.

Spencer and Derek watched the scene in amazement. "Did they just double cross the demons?" Reid asked.

"I think they did."

Sunrise was just moments away. Cas and Sam were almost there. They just had to wait—

"Owie," the little boy said, tears streaming down his face. "Papa?" He said, looking to his father who was weakly groaning in the center of the seal, curled in on his bleeding knee. "Daisy?" He looked to his big sister who was shivering and bawling against her father. He looked around to the people circling him and he reached out to Nini, her female face the only thing he latched onto. "It hurts," he said as he started to crawl towards the outer circle of the Devil's Trap and towards her.

Nini crouched down low to the edge of the seal and tried to comfort him from there, "Sweetie, I know it hurts but we need you stay there, just for a few moments, can you do that for me?"

"Pwease? It hurts so bad," he said, extending his arms out to her. As if just seeing all the blood on his arms he started to scream, terribly and frantically. He crawled faster towards her, the pain in his leg increasing as he jostled the arrow shaft against the wood.

"He's going to break the seal!" David shouted. "Dean, Spencer!" Hill popped his head around from behind Derek but Morgan just grabbed the kid and brought him to the wall.

Dean hated Latin. Good God he hated Latin and now he had to do speed Latin?

Spencer accessed Mani's journals and all the writings from all the books he'd so far read in the library and quickly found an abbreviated rite that should work . . . maybe? Banishment of disembodied demons. Sounded right. Yes! Okay!

Taking their cues from Spencer, Dean and David sped through the prayer that was a rapid call and response. If the boy managed to break the seal before they were done, the three demons could find hosts wherever they could and potentially would be back as soon as they liked. The 'Ripper' would continue killing until found again.

The little boy's hand was just over the inner edge of the seal when Spencer shouted, "Amen!" David and Dean echoed him and just as the seal was broken, the black energies were pulled out of that world and they fell, like torrential black rain, down into the fine cracks of the floor and deep into Hell.

Nini scooped the little boy up in her arms and snapped the arrow shaft. Rocking back and forth with him she hushed him as he wailed onto her chest. Dean quickly went to the little girl and did as Nini did to the arrow shaft. She weakly held onto him, crying.

"Daisy?" The father groaned. "Liam?"

"They're fine," David said, leaning down to him. "They're fine and you are as well."

"Oh, God, oh, God," the father said, covering his eyes and letting out choked sobs as memories of what he'd done when under Azazel's control swam through him. "Oh, God."

Spencer and Derek looked on to the aftermath of it all and felt sick with the knowledge that saving them might not have been the merciful thing to do at all.

With the first rays of dawn through the tall windows, a subtle swooping, like the flapping of wings, was heard and the group turned to see Castiel and Samuel standing by the doors to the ballroom. Just moments before, from their perspective, they had left Dean, Spencer, Derek, David and Nishtha to an evening with General and Mrs. Tilney and a possible run in with Jack the Ripper and now they looked on at the room filled with new faces, most of which were children.

Hill watched the two new people and could feel the enormous positive energy emanating from the smaller one but it was nearly completely eclipsed by the intense darkness seeping through from the larger one. Like the man and his children had been, Hill could tell that the darkness wasn't the man himself but a presence inside of him. It was greater and darker than those three demons had been combined.

Nini called Cas over and, understanding her, he passed over the three injured strangers and healed their wounds, putting them to rest. Their clothes were restored to newness and cleanliness. The blood was gone.

Sam looked to Dean who held the sleeping little girl in his arms and blew out his cheeks before asking his brother, "So . . . what'd we miss?"

* * *

Hill looked at his throat in the mirror and couldn't see a single mark. His eyes were no longer bloodshot. Even the rip in his coat from snagging it on the fence at school a few weeks ago was gone. He looked to Castiel and shook his head in amazement. An angel. A real angel.

"How long do you think they'll be gone?" Hill heard Mr. Morgan ask Captain Campbell.

"Perhaps not as long as a generation but long enough. I hope."

Young Mr. Campbell, the one who had Mrs. Campbell's eyes, only responded, "Trust me, not nearly long enough."

"Yeah," Samuel, the angel's apprentice, Mr. Campbell's brother, agreed. This was such an unusual amalgam of people. Such a strange family. Hill didn't know what it was like to have such a family. He didn't much know what it was to have a family at all. He barely spoke to his father and his mother, well, his mother wasn't much interested in being a mother at all.

"I think its best if we ask Michael to take their memories," Nini said, looking to the large bed where father and children were still resting. "They'll never remember what happened."

No one could disagree.

"Can I—" Hill began from the chair by the mirror. "May I keep my memories? Please?"

"Hill, this night isn't something you'll want—" Nini began.

"Please. I have to. All my life I've known about these things but I never knew what they were called. I know now. I know I'm not insane for it either."

Dean frowned to Nini and almost immediately understood. The others, lacking a psychic soul-link, required explanation.

"Young Mr. Hill here is an empath," Nini explained. "A very rare gift of spiritual discernment."

"You can sense demons?" Spencer asked the boy.

"Yes. And other things. Feelings, emotions. Everything like that. I especially can tell when a person lies. That's why everyone thinks I'm bad. I'm not bad. Adults just lie to children more than they should."

Derek smiled at that.

Hill looked to Sam and something in the boy's eyes nearly caused him to shiver. It was like, he could see it. Like he could see _him_.

"What is it?" Hill asked, not knowing why he did. "It's not controlling you but it's so much and so angry. It's on a rampage in there. What are you?"

Sam seemed to be at a loss for words when Nini looked to Hill. "Remember when I said that the symbol on the floor was a prison and not to be scared of it?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Samuel is a . . . kind of prison. You mustn't be frightened by him."

He understood her meaning. "Oh."

Sam swallowed hard. Was that what he was? Not human, not angel but a prison? Was that his new definition? No, it wasn't. No, it wouldn't be. Once Lucifer was gone from him Sam knew exactly what he was and what he would be for the rest of his life.

"And I'm a hunter."

Hill smiled and it was bright and wide. "Then I'm a hunter too."

They all looked at the boy still chubby with baby fat, wearing his private school uniform and they glanced to one another. Spencer Hill wanted to be a hunter. Was it his destiny to battle evil?

"You think you have it to be a hunter?" Nini asked him with a smile. "To be a hunter you have to be a warrior. Are you a warrior, Hill?"

"I am. I can be." Then he cocked his head and cheekily asked, "I thought Brahmins couldn't be warriors."

Nini exclaimed in a loud chortle of laughter and shook her head. "Lord, the propaganda against anyone Indian. Honestly child, not everyone from India is a Brahmin and I'm glad to be a warrior." She looked to Cas and Sam, "Angels are warriors, aren't they?"

"Yes?" He said.

"And you can't very well convince evil to calm itself, can you?" She asked.

"No ma'am," He said, not quite understanding where she was going.

"Then what happens to humanity if we are unwilling to fight?"

He understood her. "We fall to evil."

"I have nothing against the peaceful man if he is peaceful to his fellow men but I am a fighter and a hunter for good reason."

Hill absorbed that and it was a lesson he would never forget. With the assimilated lesson came a rumble from his stomach. He blushed as everyone smiled. "Sorry. I missed all my meals yesterday."

"Go rest in the next room and I'll ring the bell for breakfast," Nini said, scooting him out of the bedroom.

"Yes, ma'am, thank you ma'am," he said.

Spencer watched the boy leave the room and considered what he'd thought over in the coupé from Christ Church. Destiny had given two options, to save Mary Kelly or to save Spencer Hill. Other than perhaps, somehow, being a distant namesake, he didn't know the name to be anything particular in the annals of mundane history. Perhaps this was it then. Perhaps Spencer Hill was destined to be a great demon hunter and Bobby would know of his legendary hunts. Hunters were rarely written of so perhaps he existed in verbal history. The choice wasn't much of a _choice _at all and maybe it was supposed to be that way? Doc Shurley had said that he made choices and they were inherently right. Whoever Hill was, Doc had decided to save him.

"You will all have breakfast as well. And sleep, by Lord," David said to the wilting group before him.

Dean weakly raised his hand, "Co-sign."

"Go wash up," David said, rolling aches from his shoulders.

Before Nini could leave, Dean went to her and handed her her gun back. "A Colt?" He asked, presenting his to her for comparison.

She smiled, "That it is. Lord, that looks like one of grandfather's originals."

That brought the immediate attention of Sam and Spencer. "Wait, what?"

Nini took on the wistful look of someone recalling a long lost romance. "It was 1830, he was sixteen and a new sailor in India. He'd never been anywhere and got himself into a bit of trouble with a shifter of which my great-grandfather had to help him out of. He in turn had a bit of a romance with my grandmother. It was only months after he sailed off that my great-grandfather realized he should have let the shifter get the young American because that's when my mother was born."

Spencer pulled out the iPad and opened up the Campbell family tree. For the entry of Nini's mother's father there was only _Samuel C. ~ American_.

"They kept up correspondence but he didn't dare return for fear of what her father would do to him. He'd learned dhanurveda from the family."

Dean pulled out the Demon-Killing-Knife. "Is this one of his too?"

"Yes, there we go. You didn't know?" The Campbell boys shook their heads, stumped. "Didn't you think it was an obvious connection? The symbols are the same."

"Yeah, but . . ." Dean began. "My Colt doesn't have them—" He offered.

"Have you checked _inside_ the barrel?" She asked lightly.

"Inside . . ."

"You think Anglicans are bad? Americans would have burned him at the stake for something like this." She said, gesturing to her own gun. She touched her stomach. "And I'll be having the first boy for three generations. _Ezekiel_ and then when he has a son he'll be, oh, I don't know—"

"Ishmael," Spencer offered, already knowing the branches of the tree.

"Oh, I like that."

Dean thought to their grandfather, Samuel. To his brother. To Samuel Colt, the famous gunsmith. The hunter. He thought to the ballroom floor and then to the devil's trap made of iron and taking up miles of countryside protecting a devil's gate of which his Colt was the key.

Fate.

Destiny.

He wasn't so afraid of it anymore. He was actively a part of it, they all were. They just had to make choices.

They just had to make the right choices.

* * *

"Spencer?" David called from his bedroom doorway. Reid was getting dressed for tea with Lady Tilney. Nini was right, there was no such thing as time travelers who had no time. They didn't know what their future journeys would bring and so when they had the opportunity to enjoy themselves, even for one solitary day after such a turbulent night, they decided to grab a hold of it and they were. He was sure Sam was helping Dean with his tie and Cas was bemused by whatever outfit Nini had dressed him in this time. Derek would likely be with Hill who would be off back to Harrow once he steeled up enough courage to try and explain his nearly two day absence from school. The kid was brave enough to go searching for Jack the Ripper all on his own but not brave enough to face his head of house.

"Yeah?" Reid replied. "I'm ready, I think." He looked at himself. Again he looked like Oscar Wilde but it was kind of growing on him.

David entered the room, an envelope in his hand. The paper was old by the coloring but it was well preserved. A black wax seal closed it. It had never been opened. "Jean Louise gave this to us for you. She said to read it before you left us."

Spencer looked doubtfully at the letter, knowing it had been written by a woman who, if he had joined with her, was a future _him_. This broke nearly every law of time travel and yet, he would make the choice to write it and give it to Nishtha and David. He knew the consequences of opening the letter but he also knew the consequences of continuing this journey blind. He took the envelope from David and opened it. It was a date, a time and coordinates with a note to use the modern system, not the contemporary.

"But that's too early," Spencer said of the date there, looking to David.

David didn't know what to tell him other than, "You know if she sent it, there must be a reason."

That couldn't be argued. However the paradox was turning, time hinged on that date, that time and that place.

Spencer folded the letter back into shape and put it away in his pocket. "Yeah."

* * *

"They should sleep through the rest of the day," Cas said following Dean and Sam down the stairs. Michael had been clear that he wouldn't encounter them while they were on their journey and so Cas made sure that the man and his children would sleep until well after they were gone.

"I really wanted that parade," Dean said, walking down the stairs of No. 20 Hanover Square.

"Wentworth said he couldn't wake any of us for luncheon much less the parade," Nini said, tying on her bonnet. "Well, I suppose Sam and Castiel, you—" she frowned. "How did you occupy your time?"

"I taught Cas how to play pool," Sam said looking like it had been an _interesting_ experience.

"Good. The billiards room doesn't get a lot of play," Nini said.

"I honestly don't understand the challenge," Cas replied. "It's all vectors and weight distribution."

Sam rolled his eyes. "You're an angel the size of the Chrysler building squeezed inside a guy a head shorter than me. Yeah, you're not gonna see the challenge of popping a ball in a hole."

Castiel shrugged. "And yet knowing all of this you still tried to pretend it was somehow diverting."

Sam sighed.

Nini giggled. "I suppose tea with the General and Lady Tilney will have to be all the diversion we get this afternoon."

"That's supposed to compare to a parade?" Dean petulantly asked.

Sam poked his brother in the back, prodding him further down the stars. "Stop whining."

"Look who's talking."

"It's not whining to wish I could have been here to get that Yellow-Eyed fu—"

"And, here's Hill," Derek said from the drawing room, cutting off Sam. Sam bit his lip and just gave the kid a weak smile.

Wentworth came up to Nini and said, "The taxi is here, ma'am."

"Thank you, Wentworth. Hill will be out in a moment."

"Very well, ma'am."

Nini turned to Hill who had been well-rested and well-fed and she smiled to him while adopting a matter-of-fact tone. "And so, young Mr. Hill, if that really is your name, have you readied yourself for the consequences of your actions?"

Hill sighed, lowering his gaze, "Yes, ma'am."

"And no more sneaking out to go hunting?"

He repeated words that had been drilled into his head, "Not until I've been trained."

"Which means, I do not want to see you on this doorstep without your being on holiday."

Hill grinned up to her. "Well . . . tomorrow is the week-end—"

She folded her arms across her chest and said, "And you'll likely be peeling potatoes standing up _all_ week-end because your backside will be too sore."

He cringed then almost immediately cheered up, "Well, next week-end then?"

"You're incorrigible. Don't you have schoolwork?"

"Depends on the subject. This interests me very much. Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught."

"That's a very good way to put it," David said, appearing at the top of the staircase with Spencer at his side.

Reid scrunched up his nose and shook his head. "Wait . . ."

"Alright, off you go," Nini said, shooing him.

Hill waved to everyone and followed Wentworth out the front door.

Something clicked in Spencer's mind and he barreled down the stairs and was at the front door just as the brougham was pulling away from the curb.

"Winston?" Spencer called out to him.

The little boy's face was absolutely shocked and he called back, "How did you know?-!" just as the carriage rounded the curve and joined the other carriages on the busy road filled with the holiday traffic.

"Kid?" Derek asked, standing by Reid's side as they watched the brougham roll away. The rest of the group exited the home and stood at the stairs watching the taxi go.

Spencer laughed. Out loud and his eyes lit up like candles. There went the boy who would grow up knowing to never compromise with evil and who distrusted pacifists as much as humanly possible. He would be a hunter but history would never know it . . . well, not all of it. He would be trained by David and Nishtha Campbell and perhaps one day his life would so inspire William Reid that he would name his son _Spencer_, or even partly because his first child would be named Diana and his youngest would be named Mary and to William, that would just be _interesting_.

"_Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught_. It's a quote. I've read it before, so many times."

"Who said it?"

Spencer gestured to the taxi. "He did."

"Hill?" Derek asked. "You said you didn't know who he was."

"Spencer Hill? No. Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill? Yes."

Derek, Dean and Sam all shot glances to the vanishing carriage.

"No way," Dean said.

"Wait . . ." Sam said. "Oh God, we just set English public policy back a couple of decades!"

Dean was chuckling so hard. "It's not the kid's fault your hero is Gandhi."

"Dean!"

Nini and David looked to one another and mouthed, "Gandhi?"

Derek shook his head. He told the kid that you couldn't negotiate with evil and he wouldn't. Ever.

Spencer understood the choice they'd had to make a little better. Without knowing who he was, without knowing his impact on history, they had chosen to save a child. To them, he'd just been a child and that was what justified it. It didn't make it any easier, it didn't make the death of Mary Kelly any less terrible but he fully grasped the lesson about choices. In his realization and acceptance, Spencer Reid became a hunter.

* * *

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	21. Time I Am

A/N: Don't forget to check my profile for the soundtrack

**Chapter Twenty One**

**Time I Am**

_New Orleans, 1794_

A name plaque in white paint over black walnut wood read 'le Blanc.'

"December 7, 1794," Spencer said as they stood before what they assumed was the le Blanc family home in what would later be known as the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was just before midnight and unlike its modern day descendent, the city in general was in darkness, the only lights coming from the upper levels of homes. "Tomorrow all of this will be burned to the ground." The second Great New Orleans Fire would happen on December eighth and destroy most of the city. By that time the next day, the spot they stood on would be covered in ashes.

Dean looked up to the two-story whitewashed wooden house that was built in the French colonial style. There was a wraparound wrought iron gallery and planters filled with heartsease. It was a real house. It was a home and Jean Louise would barely be three and a half when her home would burn. His memories pushed in on that.

The house didn't exist in the le Blanc documents. Spencer figured that's why Jean Louise's letter had to include the coordinates. He imagined very few documents would have survived the fire.

"Le Maison Blanc," Dean chuckled in the French he'd acquired from Marie. "That's funny."

The four of them looked at him and just blinked.

"The White Hou—" Dean huffed. "Okay." He climbed the few steps onto the porch and went to the door. He lifted his hand to knock but paused in hesitation. He was going to meet her. It had only been three days for him but had been four years for her to have been born and to grow. He didn't know what he was feeling. Emotions never transferred but he was there when it happened; these were his emotions.

Sam came up alongside his brother and reached out, a hand on his shoulder. "Dean?"

Dean escaped his thoughts and knocked on the door.

They heard the sound of footsteps on wood and a light moved from upstairs to down.

"Who is it?" A recognizable but deeper than they remembered voice asked from beyond the door.

"Yo Gus, open up," Dean said with a smile.

Latches were quickly released and the door was thrown open onto the candle light from a tin lantern held out by a nineteen year old Auguste Sébastien le Blanc. "Oh my—" He began. He pushed long dark blonde hair from his eyes and looked around in shocked amazement to his visitors, confirming to himself that he wasn't hallucinating. "Holy shit, you guys!" He exclaimed with happiness. To Dean, he engulfed him in a giant hug and then he quickly waved them inside. "Come in, come in. Lemme go get them. Fuckin' awesome!" He said before he lit a few more candles in the foyer and jogged up the staircase.

"He's had an attitude adjustment," Derek observed.

"I must have kicked the hell out of his ass," Dean casually replied.

Sam pointed to the vapor of Auguste and then to Castiel. "You weren't translating that, were you?"

Castiel glowered before saying, "It would seem that he has learned English."

Derek looked to Dean and said, "And _obviously_ learnt it from you."

Sam and Spencer snorted as discreetly as they could.

"Oh come on," Dean said. "Who _really_ knows how they spoke back when—now—whatever. That," he casually pointed up to where Auguste disappeared, "is not my fault."

In his line of pointing, Noémi Pénélope le Blanc, resplendent in a white gauzy nightgown with her black hair flowing to beyond her waist appeared. There was a happy grin on her red lips when she said, "You little bitches." Her words, silky and smooth, had the faintest hint of a French accent so they realized that too hadn't been translated by Cas. Everyone but Dean gulped and hard. Dean narrowed his gaze on them, especially Castiel.

"Seriously?"

Sam exhaled, "She's not _our_ sister." Castiel shook his head in agreement with Sam.

Dean rolled his eyes.

"How the hell are ya?" She asked, jogging down the stairs and wrapping her arms around Dean. She gave the rest of the group a general wave.

He shrugged, "Okay. Yeah, so, I shouldn't be a language teacher."

"Not at all," another voice from the top of the stairs said out to them. They looked up to see Katherine Sabine le Blanc in a set of flannel pajamas. "I have to resort to English novels to make sure I'm not talking like a sailor." She pouted. "The English are _hardly _romantics."

"Kitty—" Dean chuffed out a breath when she, at full speed, ran down the stairs and grabbed onto him in a tackle.

"I forgot how tall you were," she said to Dean. "Marie's so little and you're a giant. I mean," she looked to Spencer and Sam, "granted, it's all relative—"

"Nice to see you too," Dean snorted, knowing Kitty and knowing that when she babbled she never meant any offense. Well. Hardly ever.

She released him and said in an authoritative rush, "Your way of talking isn't suited to our time but Marie was the only one of us who could speak a _word_ of English and so we picked up the _worst _things but it was either that or Spanish and none of us spoke a syllable of that either and your Spanish is just as randy as your English! And—"

"When do you breathe?" Sam asked her with an amazed expression.

She took on a haughty look and said demurely, "I'll breathe when I'm dead."

"Kitty, quit complainin'," a third voice said from above them. "Don't listen to her," nineteen year old Marie Héloïse le Blanc, head of the family le Blanc, said as she came down the stairs in the eighteenth century equivalent of a t-shirt and sweat pants. Her long hair was braided back in cornrows and bunned at the nape of her neck. "She gets to flirt all she wants with the Creole guys she just happens to like and then feigns English when anybody under a _seven_ tries to talk to her."

"I plead the fifth," Kitty said.

Spencer frowned. "It's 1794. New Orleans isn't a part of the United States."

"_Yet_," she said.

He didn't try to argue that.

Marie took a moment to take in Dean before she gestured to his side and said, "Gimme a minute?" He completely understood and nodded. She had gestured towards Sam and Spencer. She practically jumped on them both in a giant hug. "Sammy!" She exclaimed. "Spencer," she laughed.

Derek watched the scene with a smile and turned a little to Cas. "That doesn't look like emotions didn't transfer," he observed.

"She's had four years to make her own emotions, I think," Cas said.

She pulled away, beaming. She sized them up. "You're both too tall. You'll give a girl vertigo." Then she shrugged and said with typical Dean authority, "But, there'll always be supermodels."

Sam squinted and asked, "Is randomness a _Dean_ personality trait or is it just a soul thing?"

"I was fifteen when _that_," she gestured to Dean, "happened. What personality? This is all him in a _much_ cuter package." She presented herself with a smile.

"Hey!" Dean objected.

She turned to him and gave him the kind of half-amused yet half-withering look that he'd only ever seen used effectively by Lisa. "I _am _cuter."

He didn't see the point in belaboring the issue. Besides, she looked like a doll in sweats so, whatever, she _was_ cuter.

Marie turned to Cas and almost as immediately as she saw the whites of his eyes she latched herself around him and held him close. She didn't say and word and he didn't either.

He didn't want to, but Dean had to turn away.

Looking up, she pulled away a little with a ponderous concentration. "Never really wondered before but I'm wonderin' now: Cas, are you ticklish?"

"Define."

"If I tickle you, would you laugh?"

"Still evaluating '_tickle_.'"

"God, you _are_ Data," she muttered. "What's this feel like?" She asked before she proceeded to go at his side.

He considered it. "Odd," he concluded.

"But a bad odd?"

He considered it more. "Hmm . . . no, not a bad odd."

She hugged him again. "Awesome!"

Pulling away from him, Marie turned to Derek . . . and her cheeks turned impossibly red and she immediately avoided eye contact. Kitty and Noémi giggled. Sam and Spencer couldn't contain their laughter so they both bit their inner lips as their eyes watered.

Dean threw his hands up, "Still?-!"

"I can't help it," Marie sighed, toeing the plank floor as she blushed.

Derek grinned and at all costs avoided looking at Dean.

"Try," Dean insisted. "It's just seriously weird."

She glanced up to Derek and looked at him through her lashes. "But I'm a girl."

"Well," he was flustered. "Stop it."

Marie gave Derek a small wink before turning to Dean. "Fine. _Dad_." They stood across from one another and she said, "So. A wave and hello?" She gave him a small wave. Dean reached out and took that hand in his and held it. Her surprise was only momentary before looking into his eyes explained everything. She understood. "Three days? How are you even vertical?"

"No clue," he confessed.

"Took me forty weeks before I saw the end of that tunnel," she said, giving a confession of her own. "So, it's a little early yeah? And I mean date, not time."

Spencer spoke out, "Jean Louise sent me a letter. She gave it to Nishtha and David." He held out the letter to Marie.

She frowned at that and looked up to him. "Do you know what it means? Why now?"

"There's going to be a fire that destroys almost the entire city tomorrow. We think—"

With a sigh she nodded, "Pervy-angel." She had managed to give Aeshma the exact same nickname as Dean had given him. Oddly, she didn't seem scared or even surprised. "We figured." She looked to Kitty and Noémi who seemed self-assured and determined, something that had been missing the last time they'd met. "Since René's still alive and _technically_ still a man, badass fuck _would _show up before the generation mark."

"He can't be after Jean Louise," Derek said. He didn't add that in the BAU they'd seen worse.

She shrugged, "I know. It's not practical. He wouldn't burn up his vessel for no reason—" She and Dean came to the same conclusion at the same time. "Right. Revenge. A classic."

"Why not? It's not like he can . . . _use _René anymore," Dean said. They both gave a dark huff of satisfaction at that.

"Fine," Marie said. "We're ready for it. I've been training them."

Dean looked between the three of them and opened his mouth to say—

"Don't," Marie warned with a warm smile.

"But—" he said, mimicking her smile. "You don't even know—"

"Something about Charlie's Angels."

Dean settled down.

Spencer asked her, "Are you sure?"

Marie opened her palm and they all watched closely as a small spark of energy grew from a tiny flare into a mini planet composed of a whirlwind of energy. Kitty held out her palm and a sphere of fire emerged in the same way. Noémi held out her hand and streaks of ice soared. The le Blanc line of witches had begun. Marie clenched her fist and the lightning ball was extinguished. "My mom had the bloodline for generations but it seems that their mom's dad was also my dad's dad and he had it too. Trust me when I say, Pervy-angel's _really_ gonna regret coming back."

They each took that in and realized they'd come to ride in as champions of these women and these women sure didn't seem to need champions.

"Reid?" Derek said to Spencer. "I'm thinking maybe _they're_ gonna be the ones to burn down the city."

Noémi and Marie turned to Kitty and gave her an exasperated look. "I'll try not to!" She said. She blew on her palm and the flames went out. "Sort of still working on my aim . . ." They sighed.

"But," Dean said, stepping forward. "If you all have this tied up, why would Jean Louise send the letter?"

It was when a pensive look chewed at her expression that Dean knew there was something she wasn't telling him. "Marie?"

She turned to Spencer. "Can I see it? Just have to double-check something," she asked, gesturing to the satchel he carried the iPad in.

"Sure," he said. He handed it over to her.

Accessing the le Blanc family branch on the Campbell family tree, Marie saw her own name there and Jean Louise's. Her face fell.

"I think I know. I mean, I knew. I knew the minute it happened but . . ." She was trying to answer Dean's question but she couldn't catch the right words. Something was wrong.

"Marie—"

She held onto his arms and her eyes pleaded with him. "Don't be freaked, okay? It's not even _possible_ for you to be as freaked as I was—"

"Where is she?" He took her hands and the kind of panic he felt when Ben came home late from school the month there was a Lamiae loose in their town was rolling up inside of him.

"Look who won't go back to sleep?" Auguste announced from the top of the stairs with a laugh. "I've tried reading stories but that's not working." Small footsteps were heard pattering on the wood. Everyone turned to the stairs and all the men on the first level collectively gasped.

"What—" Derek barely managed to say.

"That's not—" Spencer exhaled. He immediately identified the eyes that were identical to his own in a face that was so very tiny and small. She had dark brown hair that fell in curly waves all down her back. Her features were mostly Marie's but she was so . . . well, it was safe to say that it was no surprise where the _le Blanc _came from. As much as Spencer had anticipated that moment, as much as he had expected the surprise it would carry he never expected the moment to be so much bigger than he'd pictured.

Auguste held her hand in his and in his other hand he held another small, pale one. A second one. There was another child. Almost exactly as the first except for three essentials: the eye shape was just slightly off even though the color was exact and her brown hair was just lightly streaked in blonde. Her bone straight hair would also have fallen around her face in sheets if not for the bright pink ribbons holding it in pigtails.

Sam blinked between both girls and couldn't believe it. "Twins?"

Marie limply shrugged. "Yep." She looked to Dean. "Surprise."

He gaped.

"What—" Sam looked to Castiel. "What does this mean?"

Dean gave his brother a pleading look to just zip it for a minute so he could just wrap his head around what he was seeing. It was easy for Sam to translate that look since it was a familiar one that repeated throughout their insane lives.

The girls were so little and they partially hid behind Auguste's legs.

Marie waved her daughters over. "Hey, you know what time it is? What are you doing up?"

They both broke away from Auguste and ran towards her. They gripped onto her legs and stared up to the strangers, their eyes bright and filled with curiosity.

"Johnny wanted to see," the other said very quietly.

"Wait—" Dean said. "_Johnny_? . . . Jean—" French roamed through his mind until he realized, "_Jean's _a boy's name." He shook his head, part of him completely disbelieving and part of him thinking she was awesome. "You didn't."

Marie shrugged, "My mom wasn't exactly Donna Reed and his was the only face I really could, you know, connect with the whole parent thing. It was that or Bobby."

Sam understood what they were saying. "You named your daughter after _dad_?"

Morgan pointed to 'Johnny,' "Right. Jean's the French for _John_." He looked to Marie, "Johnny?"

She blushed again.

Dean shook his head and just quietly said, "You're never gonna believe who we just saw."

Marie looked down to her girls and said about the strangers, "Guess who?"

Johnny pointed to each in turn, "Uncle Spencer, Uncle Sam, Uncle Derek, Uncle Cas and—" Dean marveled. Yep. That was _definitely_ Spencer in there. He waited for that _Uncle Dean_ when both girls rushed him with open arms and glee, "Daddy!" They squealed. Dean's face dropped like a rock as they latched onto him like barnacles. Dean stared at Marie and in a microsecond, her reasons passed to him. How do you ever tell children who their father really was when the truth was a nightmare? An almost immediate resignation to the lie passed over him. He painted on a broad smile and scooped them both up into his arms.

"And this isn't weird _at all_, Marie," he pointedly said to her. She shuffled over to Derek, Cas, Sam and Spencer, just out of the girls' earshot.

"I know, I know, but what was I supposed to tell them? I knew they'd eventually ask and the truth is a _little _stranger than fiction, yeah?"

They couldn't deny that. Having a fallen angel bent on destroying all reality wasn't exactly a contender for Father of the Year.

"And, technically, he's me," she said of Dean. "And I'm him and we were both there when it happened, him more than me even, so really, mom, dad, kinda interchangeable, right?" She didn't wait for them to respond. "And just ask Ben. I'm a great dad. And that kid is _seriously_ picky." They wondered if Marie got her tendency to ramble from Kitty or from Dean.

Castiel stepped back from the group a little and closely inspected the _other_. Samuel's question bothered him. 'What does this mean?' Cas had gone through every bit of information on the tablet. He'd read about their lives back to front and every bit of the written history of their ancestors. No where in the story had it mentioned there would be another. An extra. This little girl . . . who was she? The idea that she was an anomaly he would have to eventually handle troubled him and everything he had experienced thus far taught him that the feeling of uneasiness was evidence of a conscience. Angels never felt the disturbance of a conscience because everything they did was justified under the banner of doing the work of Heaven. They had no instincts but for a while now, ever since meeting the boys, Cas knew what it was to have that something inside telling him right from wrong. In the end, it came back to them for wasn't that what the Paraclete was? A guiding conscience?

Seeing this girl, this blonde-streaked girl with the wide open brown eyes and the vibrant pink ribbon in her hair, Cas understood all the possibilities of what she could be and all the solutions available to him. Each dropped him further into disquiet. Conversely, it disturbed him that the consideration that she could possibly be pure monster still upset him. He watched her with Dean and the idea of sending her to Hell came very close to sickening him. Was that rational? How did humans function being so counterintuitive?

He moved in closer and all of a sudden, something in the other pulled him towards her. There was something about the child . . .

Marie went to Dean and the girls and she said to him. "She's not on the tree. Missing branches. Chuck said we had to look out for missing branches." She shook her head. "I've definitely got an ulcer worrying about what it meant. I wake up every morning and the first thing I check is to see if she's still here."

Sam put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "We'll figure this out."

Marie looked over to the clock on the wall. "Before or after midnight, unless you know for sure when Pervy-angel's gonna stop by tomorrow?" She looked back to her daughter. "Now's when I'm worrying the most." She turned to Dean. "She's not there."

"It'll be fine," Dean said, reassuring her. He looked to the two girls, one with her life written out before her, the other a complete unknown. It was like her fate was hinging in the balance. Dean turned to Cas and recognized the subtle wonder passing over him. "Cas, what is it?"

"I've met her before," Cas said with finality.

"Thought you hadn't been on earth the last two thousand years?" Dean asked, a bit confused.

"I didn't meet her here, Dean." Cas looked towards Spencer. "Much later." Dean followed Cas' line of sight but didn't understand.

The child who was the topic of their conversation leaned her head on Dean's shoulder and said with a yawn, "I'm sleepy, Daddy."

Marie reached out and took Johnny in her hands. She quietly hummed, "You sleepy too, Johnny?"

"Not as much as Penny," she declared with a yawn.

"Penny?" Dean said to himself, hearing her name for the first time and instantly understanding. He laughed and then looked across the foyer to Noémi and quietly asked, not trying to have the kids hear that he didn't know their names. "Pénélope?"

The eldest sister shrugged, looking to the child who was her namesake. She whispered, "You are _eternally_ sentimental. But just Penelope. Apparently, you're not a fan of the accents."

He shook his head, "Nope. Having to learn Latin was enough."

It made no sense to him but Cas understood that the ways of his Father were never fully seeable or comprehensible. The complexities of a situation would only be clear once played all the way out to the end and they were barely through the middle of it.

"This child does not exist in your ancestry," Cas announced.

Dean quirked his lip. "We're waiting on something we don't know."

"I first met her when I first met Spencer." Everyone looked up at that and no one was sure what they heard was right. "Bobby introduced us."

"Whoa whoa, now Bobby knows her too?" Dean asked, confused.

Everyone looked to Spencer but one and two just weren't clicking in his head. The obvious danced before his eyes but it was too odd for consideration so it was never even presented as a solution. Instead, Spencer drew a complete blank. He had to slowly break it down. The first time he met Cas he was in the hospital. Bobby was there and . . . A bright blaring revolt erupted inside of him as he spun around to the child and looked her over. He darted a sharp look to Cas who simply gave him a solemn nod. He looked back to her.

Eyes as brown as his and a happy smile on her face as she rested against Dean's shoulder. The ribbons in her hair had to be the loudest pink New Orleans had to offer. He then looked over to Johnny who rested in Marie's hands and saw himself reflected back.

The twins.

So alike in so many ways. Their lives like mirrors, both on the same path and even through loss and tragedy they would end up the exact same place. Spencer had never appreciated the similarities in their lives until that moment and at that realization he wondered why it had never struck him as plaintively obvious before then.

"It's her," he finally managed to say, his mind going through the software and adding on the years and changes due to growth. He mentally added decades to her young face. His imagination then turned the blonde streaks into bleached locks. The ribbons became barrettes in the shapes of dice and dominoes. Some glamour makeup, a vintage suit and the effect was complete.

"Reid?" Derek called out to him.

"Can somebody just spit it out?" Dean asked.

Derek said to Cas, "You met her when you met Reid? What, at the hospital? Two hundred years in the future? How's that possible?"

"The letter," Spencer said, finally understanding. "That's why Johnny sent the letter."

Marie closed her eyes and realized what that meant. The implication behind the fact that in very little time, Aeshma would reenter her life and her daughter wasn't a part of her family tree. "She sent it to save her." She handed Johnny over to Noémi. Her arms were trembling.

Cas looked to Dean and Marie. "This is not her time. She doesn't belong here."

Marie turned to Dean and reached out to take Penny into her arms. "I can't," she whispered.

"What the hell is going on?" Derek asked.

"Mommy?" The little girl looked up wondering what the commotion was about.

"Shhh. Penny, baby go to sleep," Marie said and Spencer exhaled. It was confirmation.

That hit Derek like nothing else possibly could. "Penny? You mean . . ." he shook his head. "What, Penny like," he looked to Noémi, "Penelope?" That couldn't be right. That was impossible. Derek studied the child's face so carefully and as quickly as it came to Spencer, it came to him. "Holy—" In disbelief, he looked to Dean and Marie. "She's . . . a friend of ours." He couldn't define her anymore than that. She was so much more. So much indefinably more.

A river of thoughts went through Spencer Reid and he analyzed each one as it passed. Time wasn't a flat thing but rather it was multidimensional. Johnny's letter was a self-fulfilling prophecy. She sent it in the future because it was always meant to happen. Whatever Marie thought, there was no great tragedy that she was trying to avoid because that tragedy would never have the chance to occur. There had to be an ulterior motive for taking this child and bringing her into their century but nothing really made sense. Marie could surely protect her and she would grow up side by side with Johnny. To have a twin sister who was a future vampire slayer in her corner had to be a plus.

No, the solution wasn't in analyzing the potential life she would lead there but rather in sorting out her personality as Spencer knew her and that immediately brought him the key to answer he was searching for.

What kind of person would she be if she grew up around all of this? Marie had a role in this; Johnny too had a role in this. Penelope didn't, not here.

Penelope Garcia could hardly bring herself to kill a mosquito.

"But, did we do that to her? Who chooses that sort of thing?" He pondered aloud. If she stayed, she would adapt. She would be an entirely different person. She would be unrecognizable to the person he knew and that didn't make it an inherently bad choice. That wasn't justification to take her from her family, from her world. All of this pressed on him before he realized he had been correct in the Campbell library back in London. The paradox _was _turning and it did hinge right here, right on this spot. If Penelope Garcia, as she was, didn't exist in their timeline then every contribution she'd made to the team would vanish. That was a decade of history and an influence that spanned hundreds of lives.

But there was one role in particular that only she could fill at the primary crisis point in the story.

_"You know what you need?"_

_"A functioning computer?"_

_"A house call from Garcia."_

It all started with that blank blue screen on his computer. No one on earth was quite like her. She was the best and he knew if she'd been anyone else he never would have let her in so close and without her, who knew what would have happened to JJ and Henry that night? Who knew how events would have played out beyond that?

She was also Derek's everything. She made him so much more than he'd been and without her working on his view of humanity, Spencer doubted Morgan would have opened up enough around him to begin to trust him.

The three of them were the closest knit group in the BAU and if she were removed, everything would fall apart. Without them both he never would have survived what happened to him after Georgia. Just their being there, being who they were gave him the kind of encouragement and perspective he'd needed. If he never survived that, he'd easily fall to the evil twisting knots in his life.

She was the emotional center of them both. The fate of the world hinged on her.

Marie and Dean had watched him think so loudly and _knew_ when he looked up towards them that everything had been analyzed and reanalyzed. Marie held her daughter closer.

"Mommy, why you crying?" Penny asked, the beginning of sniffles starting. Castiel went to Marie and she tried not to flinch when he placed a finger on Penny's forehead and sent the child into a soft slumber. Turning to Johnny, he did the same.

The clock began to ring midnight. Marie had to choose whether to keep her child and damn the consequences or let her go to save her so she could play her part in saving the world.

"Derek," she gasped, a sob breaking her voice. He came up quickly to her and she handed Penelope to him. She kissed the crown of her head and no one could deny that her heart was breaking. The bell continued to toll. Marie turned to Dean. "Take care of her," she said as her hand went over her heart and pressed hard against her rib cage.

Dean's brow furrowed as something started to burn in his chest. "Marie?"

Castiel looked between them and went to Marie but he couldn't move within three feet of her. "Don't be afraid," she whispered, her eyes never leaving Dean's as the connection between the one soul carried over something it never had.

"What are you doing?" Dean asked, the burn blooming into something harsh and warm, aching and comforting.

"Giving you my love for her." She tied it to the soul and bound it off.

A moment later, the burn was gone but something far more intense had replaced it.

"You didn't have to do that," Dean said, trying to catch his breath. "She's three. I'm not a coldhearted bastard; I'll take care of her."

She shook her head. "She gets older. Between her, Sam or Spencer, come on." And she said it like it was a forgone conclusion and he realized it was. He didn't want to consider what kind of person that made him. He understood her and what she did was so complete that he couldn't even begin to resent her for it.

"Go," Marie said to them as the last chime welcomed the new day.

The five travelers, now plus one, disappeared.

* * *

"Good luck," Diana Reid said to the boys just moments before they left. Bobby Singer, standing next to her, waved them off. The apprehension he felt was shared between them. Those boys were essentially going back to dick with history and God knows what that could mean for the present.

They vanished and Diana slowly lowered her hand. "Bobby?"

"Annie?"

"This is about the deepest crap pile ever, isn't it?"

"Yep."

She sighed. "Alright." Confirmation was always a good thing. "So . . . time travel. Does it mean we should start worrying about them right about now?"

"I'm honestly about to shit myself they're not back yet," he confessed. "You think the universe implodes now or later?"

A flutter of wings was heard and they were back. The suddenness of it just about shook the skin off of Diana and Bobby.

"We were starting to—" Bobby began when he stopped, his words folding up dead on his tongue. He looked from the little girl in Derek's arms to Cas then Sam and Spencer. They all looked from Bobby and then unconsciously to Dean. Bobby took that to mean something and his growing ire settled squarely on Dean. "Have you lost your—"

Dean shushed him, gesturing to the kid.

Bobby's mouth was left gaping, his eyes ablaze. He adjusted and dropped his incendiary rage to a whisper as he went to Dean and grabbed him by the arm, leading him out to the kitchen, slamming the sliding doors behind him. "Have you lost your goddamn mind?-!"

"Bobby—"

"Where the hell'd you pick her up and so help you Jesus if you say any year that ain't this year I'm gonna wring your neck!"

"She belongs here—" Dean said before he tripped over the logic and amended, "Maybe not _here_ as in here right now, exactly—"

"She's going back! I don't care what the _hell_ you're about to say. You can't just snatch a kid from the belly of history and keep her like a damn puppy—"

"She's not _a_ kid, Bobby," Dean protested, gesturing back towards the library. "She's _my _kid." The second he said that without any qualification he knew it was probably the last thing Bobby needed to hear.

Bobby's face fluctuated between white and purple. "You tell me you did not—"

"I didn't!" Dean didn't know how this conversation was getting so twisted and it didn't help that he tripped over the logic again when he said, "Technically. I guess." Bobby looked like he was about to pick up a skillet and wallop him with it. Dean knew saying _'I was a girl at the time'_ wasn't going to fly. "Whatever I say right now isn't going to make any sense but I need you to stop riding my ass for two seconds and just trust me!"

"Trust you? If you had two fingers worth of sense I'd trust you but this?-!"

The door slid to the side and Sam stood in the gap, the iPad in his hand. "Bobby, I know you're mad—"

"As hell!"

"Bu-but, just take this. Just read it," Sam pleaded, interceding for Dean.

Diana Reid came into the kitchen behind Sam. She looked as flustered as Bobby. "After reading the Riot Act to Spencer and having it read right back at me for my trouble, they think that'll convince us this isn't the nightmare it really looks like."

Dean looked to the computer and knew exactly what Bobby and his aunt would have to sift through. His thoughts, his feelings from that night. Every single detail and it was the only thing that would make them understand. It was the only solution but why did it feel like another violation? There was suddenly no air in the kitchen and he had to take a walk. He turned and went out through the back door without a word.

"Dean?" Sam said. He handed over the tablet and went after his brother.

In the library, Spencer and Derek sat side by side on the small couch. Penelope was sleeping against Derek's shoulder as she lay across his arms. Cas stood in the center of the room watching them.

"The strangest thing is," Spencer started to say with a pensive frown. "Well, that this isn't the strangest thing that's happened."

Derek snorted. "Yeah," he said in a quiet voice. "If you're comparing it to Demon Jack the Ripper and Winston Churchill." He turned to Cas. "Cas, she's gonna need things like vaccines and all of that, right?"

Spencer looked up to the angel. "Oh, yeah, wow. I didn't even think about that. We've gone all over time and didn't even consider—"

"Do not worry about that," Cas said. He went to the little girl and touched her hair, inoculating her. "You will not be the harbingers of plague."

With a grin marking the absurdity, Derek looked to Reid and said, "That's comforting."

Cas explained, saying, "No, I mean, when you three travel I of course have no foreknowledge of how long the travels will be so certain human restraints have been lifted. Your bodies have been shielded from contagion and your aging has been halted." They blinked. "Of course, only until the end of your journey."

"Wait . . . we're not aging?" Derek asked.

"A temporary defense. I've heard of missions lasting decades. Aging has its purpose for a mortal life but when that mortal is in the service of heaven, it is unnecessary. It is the reason hunters in the time of Enoch aged so slowly. But with time travel, we halt it completely. You will eventually have to return to your own time. Even ten years physical change would be too observable."

"Huh," Derek said with a quizzical smile. "So, right now, we're still not—"

"The mission isn't over as of yet, so no."

* * *

Dean Campbell stomped through the stacks of cars knowing that the borders beyond the Singer Salvage Yard were off-limits to him but he just wanted to go. To escape the looks he'd get when he'd go back to the house. He'd almost be able to deal with however Diana would react but Bobby? To know that Bobby would know what happened?

"Dean!" Sam called out, appearing right in front of him. Dean jumped like a cat. He caught himself and gave his brother a narrow look. Sam asked him, "Where are you going?"

"Air," Dean waved to the bright, beautiful sky above him and to the world in general. "Can I just get some?" Sam could see Dean looked like he was just at the edge of nearly a hyperventilation fit.

"Okay, okay. Get some air."

Dean grabbed his side and tried to calm his nerves. Why was it that demons were so much easier to deal with than this kind of thing? He laughed a little but nothing was funny. "They say, you know, He doesn't give you more than you can handle and I was fine up to about thirty seconds ago." He turned around and shrugged. "Okay, _fine _is an exaggeration, maybe but I . . ." he thought back to Marie and laughed again. He bent over just a little, breathing a bit harder. "I was vertical."

"Dean?"

"Pretty sure He's just throwing shit at me now to see what'll stick." He laughed again and turned back to Sam. "Up to here with it and not a shovel in sight."

"Sit down," Sam said and it wasn't a request. He took Dean and guided him to the trunk of an old Buick. They sat side by side.

"You know what she did back there? Why she had to?"

"It was a dick move," Sam admitted.

Dean shook his head. "I'm the King of Dick Moves, that's not what I mean. Why she _had_ to?" He repeated. Sam drew a blank. "Back in Haiti I chose Spencer over me and her. She knew I'd do it again if I had to."

Sam looked to his brother and knew that was the truth. Even after everything he went through, he would. In a heartbeat. Marie gave her child to them, to Dean, and she made sure he'd make the same choices she would.

"She took away your options. She couldn't know you'd even be faced with that choice."

"She made sure, just in case." Dean shrugged. "And it's not a lie. Come on. If you were still in that pit and somebody gave me a choice between saving you or saving Adam I'd choose you. Can you imagine? Our kid brother, going into this completely cold and I'd still choose you, Sam." He shook his head again. "God help me."

Sam absorbed that and as much as he hated it, he accepted it. "Then I'm glad she did it," he said, very quietly.

"Yep."

They spent the next few minutes in perfect silence. Sam never really knew how to reach out to his brother. Dean always knew what to do or to say to make him feel better but when the roles were reversed, Sam found Dean appreciated quiet more than anything. As long as he was just there, everything could fix itself.

"So, how's it feel?" He eventually asked when he saw Dean had shaken free of the heaviest tension.

"What? Being a mom? Or, wait, dad, I guess? I'm not exactly a rookie at being a dad but this is different so, weird."

"How different?"

"I don't know. Ben has me _and _Lisa. I know when I'm not there, he's got her and vice versa but this is probably more like what Dad felt with us. It's more . . . complicated. Involved, I guess."

"You mean how it was just Dad and us versus the world?" Sam asked.

Dean smiled. "Yeah."

"You're not all she's got, Dean. We're here."

He shook his head. "We've mixed it up with time, Sam. All we really know is that we really don't know squat."

Sam nodded and then squinted before saying, "Well, then we should probably start getting to know some squat."

"Huh?"

"Dean, she's a living breathing adult person who I'm sure Derek or Spencer could, you know," he held up his hand to the side of his face in a _telephone_ gesture, "Call."

Dean blinked. "Oh. Yeah. Right."

Returning to the kitchen, Sam and Dean were welcomed with the resigned faces of Bobby and their aunt Diana.

Dean pointed to the tablet and asked, "You seriously didn't read all that already."

Diana sighed. "My speed's not quite Spencer's but . . ." she trailed off.

Bobby gestured to Diana. "She gave me the SparkNotes."

Dean gestured to them both and laid down the rules, "Don't ask and I won't tell you off. Got it?" They both agreed. He gave them thumbs up. "Good."

Reentering the den, Dean looked over to Derek and Spencer and to the child in Derek's arms. "So," he said, clearing his throat. "I guess—" he frowned and steeled his courage. He moved to Derek and lifted the child up into his arms. Her little head went to his shoulder and a sleepy sigh brushed against his neck. He looked to Cas. "How long is she gonna be out?"

"Nineteen minutes. Approximately."

"I can't believe it," Diana said, moving around Dean to look at the child in pigtails. "This is really her? Penelope?"

Dean glanced to his aunt. "You've met her too?"

"Of course I have," she said. "She's the sweetest girl in the world."

"I like her," Bobby said, repeating the words he'd said when he'd met her earlier that day. "Rambles a bit," he conceded before nodding to Dean. "Granted, now I see where it came from."

"Heh, very funny. Yeah. So, just so I'm clear, have you _all_ met my kid before I met her?" Before Sam could raise his hand, Dean added, "And Sam doesn't count." The house was quiet. "That is seriously messed up." Dean shrugged in futility. "Time, capital T, _Time _is a fucked up son of a bitch. Everybody write that down." He held out his free hand and gestured to the tablet. Bobby handed it to him. Dean held it in the palm of the arm he was using to support Penelope and with his free hand he opened up a search window.

"What are you doing?" Spencer asked.

"Learning some squat," Dean grumbled as he flipped through data.

No one but Sam knew what that meant. Sam translated. "He's figuring out where we go from here."

"Ah," Almost everyone said.

"Penelope Garcia," Dean said. "Really?" He looked up to Spencer and Derek. "Garcia?"

"It was her step dad's name." Spencer said. Recalling what Garcia had said in his apartment hallway he added, "She said he was from Veracruz." Spencer frowned. Now that he thought about it, Garcia had said that her name was her step dad's but in the hallway she said her dad was from Veracruz. He'd never heard her reference her step dad as her dad before. It was just a small thing, maybe a slip of the tongue, but just a little odd now that he thought about it.

Dean wasn't sure what to really think about 'step dad' but he went on. "Does she speak Spanish?"

Morgan and Reid seemed to find that mildly hilarious. "No," they both said. Spencer added, telling Dean what she'd said before, "She orders her Tex-Mex by number."

Something came to Derek as Reid said that. "But . . . she speaks French. Fluently."

Dean snorted. "And if it wasn't for Marie that would make one of us." He scrolled down to her picture. She seemed to exude cheer. It was strange. She was beautiful but in such a happy way. Glee emanated from her eyes. Her style was a hybrid of glam, baby goth and rockabilly princess. "What's her personality like?" Dean asked, something paternal drawing him away from the hard facts of the file into a deeper curiosity of Penelope as a person.

Derek and Spencer looked to one another and thought that over. "Hmm," Spencer began. Avoiding the term 'hacker' as more of a label than as a trait, he said, "She's great with electronics."

"Hell yeah she would be," Dean confirmed with some pride.

"She's into classic rock, metal." Derek added. He knew Garcia had been into seriously heavy stuff when she'd been a goth.

"Who isn't?"

Spencer said, "And she loves sci-fi and fantasy."

"Of course." Dean thought all of this was a given. No kid of his wouldn't be a Spock.

Spencer added, "Oh, and she drives a '66 Cadillac convertible."

Dean took a breath and managed a small nod. He may actually have been verklempt. Blinking back the mist in his eyes, Dean looked more through her file before he saw a note at the end of it. He almost had to read it twice before chuckling. "Seriously? This is in her file?"

"What?" Spencer asked, adjusting his glasses to peer at the screen. "Oh." He looked over to Morgan and grinned, reading off what was in the note: "Ms. Garcia, though a talented analyst, is at times inappropriately and overtly flirtatious in the working environment. Disciplinary action is recommended."

Morgan did not look amused. "Who the hell wrote that?"

"Handwriting definitely belongs to Branson."

"Didn't Hotch transfer Branson out?"

Spencer replied with a very knowing look, "Yep. And from the date on the note, not long after it was submitted."

Morgan chuckled. "Go Hotch."

Dean didn't understand. "Since when is flirting on the job a bad thing?"

Everyone shook their heads.

Bobby snorted. "Well, can't say she doesn't take after you."

Spencer considered that with good humor until he took a moment to look at it objectively. It was interesting to talk about these things, to appreciate the lightness of the conversation but the truth was that Garcia had a family. A mom and a step dad who died in a car accident when she was eighteen. She had four older brothers. All of the similarities between she and Dean could be easily attributed to the fact that they were two years apart in their current timeline and they grew up during the same era. Everything beyond that, however fun to speculate about, was irrelevant. The little girl in Dean's arms would never know him and from the reservation in Dean's face when Bobby said what he did, Reid knew Dean was aware of that too. Her family history was in the file alongside everything else.

. . . But still. Something else bothered him. He couldn't put his finger on it but it scratched at something he knew was right there but was completely missing. He went back to what Bobby had said. Was it true? In the vaguest sense, yes, Garcia and Dean had many similarities but there was a world of differences too and the main one being that he could never picture Garcia as a hunter and Dean seemed to embody that. That one, disparate fact separated them completely. It defined them both.

Heck, Reid considered, Garcia could barely watch the things on her monitors without flinching. The images were too much for her to handle and overloaded her. That was the main reason she filled her office with so . . . many . . .

He took a deep breath and sat perfectly stunned. The room turned to him.

"Kid?" Morgan said to him. "What is it?"

Spencer looked to Dean in absolute shock and then to Penelope before exhaling. "Constellations."

That one word changed everything.

"Just like when Leo died," Spencer said. "Her apartment serves the same purpose as mine but, admittedly, she has style and I tend not to bother trying so hers passes for normalcy, if not overdone."

"You're in the middle of the conversation you're having in your head," Dean said. "Slow it down."

Spencer explained to them, "Dean taught me how to block out the things I needed to forget. It's why I use paintings."

"Yeah," Derek said, knowing that. "What—?"

"Garcia. The tchotchkes she surrounds herself with. They serve the same purpose. One or two would be a familiar thing, to personalize her space, but that's not why she has them. She specifically uses them the way that I use the paintings in my apartment. This all can't be a coincidence."

Sam's brow furrowed and he looked unconvinced. "There's no way she got it from Dean. I mean, how could it be possible? She's a grown woman. Hell, she's two years older than Dean," he said, referencing the birth year on her file. "You all met her before he did." He laughed a little. "I mean she had to have a family that raised her."

That triggered something in Dean and he scrolled back through her file. "How good are the FBI background checks?" He asked them, already having the answer.

"Other than knowing what your kindergarten teacher liked to eat for lunch?" Derek asked.

"Yeah, thorough, right?" Dean asked.

Spencer and Derek nodded like it was obvious.

Dean held up the tablet and asked, "Then how come there aren't any names in this file?"

"What?" Derek asked, moving towards Dean and taking the tablet from him. "Of course there are . . ." Derek paused. He was right. There weren't any. "Well, I mean, she wasn't exactly recruited into the bureau as much as she was drafted. Her record was expunged—"

Dean looked doubly proud, "She's got a record?"

"That's not the point. What I mean is, just because the file doesn't say—" Derek stopped mid-sentence. "Wait . . ." Everything was blank. He'd known Penelope Garcia nearly ten years and in all that time she'd mentioned her family he couldn't bring one name to his lips. How was that possible? He knew stories about them, about all of them but she didn't ever mention their names. "That doesn't make sense, I'm sure she's said them. We've talked about them."

Bobby and Diana looked between Spencer and Derek and Diana quietly said, "It's a hunter's trick. Useful for when you have kids and you're all on a job. It's hard to keep the stories straight so you never say names, just titles. My mom, my dad, older brother, younger brother, things like that."

Derek balked at that. "Garcia is _not_ a hunter." That much he _knew_ to be fact but as for the rest of it, he couldn't deny the truth before him. It boggled him that she could be one of the closest people to him and still she kept him so distant. But now that he really thought about it, hadn't Reid done the exact same thing? His two closest friends had kept their lives before the BAU so close to the vest that he didn't know how much he knew about them at all. She knew his mom, she knew his sisters, she knew everything he went through as a kid and she'd never even mentioned her parents' names to him?

"She was at Cal Tech when her mom and step dad died," Derek said, repeating what he knew and in the saying realizing he knew so very little. "After that she dropped out of school and went underground." He looked over to Dean and said, "She became a pretty infamous hacker."

"How are you _just _telling me the awesome stuff?" Dean asked the room in general. "What about her dad?"

"What do you mean?"

"You said her mom and step dad died. He was _Garcia_, right? What about her dad?"

It was then that Reid and Morgan realized that Garcia had never once mentioned her biological father. As profilers, that was such a red flag they couldn't believe they'd never noticed. If she'd never met him, even a casual comment would have sufficed. If she had hated him then she would have said more than a casual comment. They were her best friends and they had honestly never heard her speak a word about him.

This entire part of their journey since New Orleans and finding her there had been affecting Derek on a level he couldn't quite grasp. At the front of his thoughts he looked across from her and saw a baby. Her story hadn't been written yet. He knew this, consciously. The Penelope before him had never lied to him. Side by side with that observation was the Penelope he knew. How much of her life had been a lie? How much of it, given the present circumstances, had been absolutely necessary. That question was quickly answered. This was Penelope Garcia he was thinking about. She couldn't lie to him for long so whatever she was hiding must have been deep and extremely essential to keep. Pulling away and looking at the situation in general, knowing what he knew about this life of hunting and where and why her life had begun, he understood at once why she'd done everything she'd ever done while still remaining his true and absolute friend: this was a girl who was essentially in the deepest kind of witness protection there was. He resented nothing.

He looked across to Dean and nodded. "You're right. We need to learn some squat." He managed a small smile and shook his head. "Okay. So, what's the next step?"

Spencer hummed. "Fact finding."

"One of you has to call her," Sam said.

"She's kept everything pretty cloak and dagger so far. Why would she tell us the truth now?" Derek asked.

"Because whatever she tells us we'll assume is the truth," Dean said.

Bobby frowned. "Huh?"

Dean gestured to the kid in his arms. "We're writing her history now so we just need a starting point. She's three so just get on the phone and get her to tell you where she was at three."

Sam shook his head and asked, "Who even knows that?"

He exhaled, "Sam, you grew up on the road but most people know that."

"So if you had to ask me that question would I have to say 'the Impala'?"

"Yep. You would."

"But," Spencer said. "Couldn't we just pick something then? Why even ask?"

Dean shrugged. "You didn't pick the other places and dates out of a hat. You turn on the computer and figure it out."

Spencer allowed that. "You would have been good at metaphysics."

"I'm fine with rebuilding transmissions."

Looking to Derek, Spencer knew this was it. One of them had to call her so that they could set her life in motion. No biggie right? It was a mental tug of war between them before Spencer pulled out his cell phone and started to scroll to her name when Derek's phone rang.

"No way," Sam said in awe.

Derek looked down at his caller ID and refrained from replying 'way' as he saw Garcia's name appear. He handed the tablet back to Dean and his eyes went to the sleeping child as he answered, putting the call on speaker phone. "Hey, Baby Girl." His voice was a little choked and rough when he said it.

"Sugar Bear, you sound awful. Comin' down with something?" Her voice filled the quiet room. Dean took a stilted breath.

Derek coughed and cleared his throat. "Nah, I'm good. Just dry from the car ride."

"Ooh," she whispered conspiratorially. "What's Reid's family like? Are they nice? Seemed nice."

Derek looked around the room of people that had been strangers to him not too long ago and now he felt like they were friends. That had never happened that quickly for him.

"Yeah, they're nice." And it was then that it came to him. A whisper of a plan. "I'm getting to hear all the embarrassing baby stories."

"Oh God, I wish I was there!" She lamented.

His gaze flicked to the child and he said, "Me too." He let that settle for a moment before shaking it off. "Reid's in this thing with his cousin. He's convinced some story happened one way and his cousin's saying otherwise."

She chuckled, "Yep. Sounds right. Which cousin? Ooh, the dreamy one in the trench that looks like an angel? Rwarr, seriously Der, rwarr."

Cas felt everyone's eyes turn to him and artfully avoided them by looking at his shoes.

"Um, trench coat, yes," Derek said agreeing to that solitary identifier. "And with Reid's recall, no one can challenge him."

"Hard truth and _so_ not fair."

"Who remembers things they did at three?" Derek scoffed. Reid held up two fingers. "Oh, he says it was when he was two."

Garcia laughed. "That should be considered cheating. No one else can remember stuff that early." Derek waved at Spencer in the same way he would if they had an unsub on the line and they had him almost exactly where they needed him.

Spencer took the clue and turned his back to the phone so she wouldn't know she was on speaker. "I heard that. I'm not cheating. Active human memory is said to start at three years, six months but that's just the mean. It's possible to recall certain things prior to that."

"Garcia," Derek said to her, "You're the only other genius I know so help me out here."

"Speaker phone me, Sugar," she said. Spencer turned around. "Reid, you are a super genius. You can't compare the things you remember to what other people remember because it's not fair."

"What does fair have to do with it? These are facts."

"About _childhood_. Who really cares all that much about facts at a time when you're still learning how to walk in a straight line and polyester and silk feel the same?"

"Well, people who say they don't care usually can't," Spencer said.

Garcia gasped with a shocked laugh, "Claws in!"

"Just an observation. I mean, you're saying I shouldn't care but that depends on your perspective."

"Is that a challenge?"

"Not a challenge so much as a small scientific inquiry. If you can produce an early childhood memory with a definite level of accuracy _and_ precision and _then_ say I shouldn't care, I'll be far more able to consider and value that opinion."

"I could just lie, you know," she said as if it were a conclusion he hadn't imagined.

Derek and Spencer turned to one another and didn't feel exactly excellent in this manipulation but they had to. Derek said, very tenderly, "I trust you better than that, Garcia."

She gave a pleased sigh and said, "Fine! Well, there's a ton of early stuff with my mom but it's too fuzzy to count. More like _feelings_. You want something really strong, gosh, let's see . . . I guess it would have to be . . . um . . . _oh_, of me and my dad. I woke up and he was just there. I don't think that ever happened before. And not _just there_ in some creepy weird way. I don't know. Nice. It felt really . . . safe." The room was quiet enough that it was almost possible to hear dust fall. Morgan waved to Reid.

"Hmm. Nice memory and all, but I'm not sure it counts." The sound Penelope made in response was almost like a highly offended squeak. "I just mean it lacks a lot of detail."

"And who said I was done yet?"

The girl on Dean's shoulder stirred. Dean looked up to Cas and the angel almost seemed shocked. No one should have been able to break through what he'd done. Then Castiel considered who this child was and it made sense.

"Motor oil and bay rum aftershave." She hummed. "That's a given. He used to rebuild transmissions." Everyone took a mental step back. She laughed. "You won't even _believe_ what he made out of an old walk man." They barely had time to process that when she said, "Whoops, _wrong _memory. Right. When I woke up we were outside and there was this castle. It was literally the biggest house ever. But we couldn't go there 'cause I wasn't dressed up for a castle so I got ready and then we went there to live."

Derek hummed and his voice didn't try and hide his doubt. "Hmm . . . Garcia, you lived in a castle?"

"Only for a year. Before we moved to San Francisco."

"You lived in a castle before you moved to San Fran?"

"Der, I may have been three but I wasn't hallucinating. A castle in Valencia."

Reid chimed in, "That's not exactly verifiable data, Garcia. You're telling us that you lived in a castle. Every child wants to live in a castle or a fort so when we're faced with imagery from our past like that its best to take it in knowing that it's an amalgam of childhood desires reconstructing the actual historical reality—"

"52341 Oakview Estate Drive. Dad was the family driver and mechanic and we lived over the garage like Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina. I wore purple corduroy overalls with a lime green shirt and pink ribbons in my hair. Would you like anymore 'verifiable data' Boy Genius?" She asked rather triumphantly. "The jacarandas were in bloom so I'd say it was early May."

Spencer pursed his lips. "Wow, Garcia. You only lived there one year and you remember all of that?"

"And just because I _can_ doesn't mean I should expect other people to, got it?"

He smiled, "I've been thoroughly chastised."

"Alrighty," she said, sounding like she just aced an exam. "Ta ta my lovelies, I was just checking in to see everything's kosher. Queen of Wisdom and Happiness out."

With a chuckle, Derek said, "Talk to you later, Baby Girl." He hung up.

Sam quirked his face and said, "She's awesome."

"We know," Spencer said with a happy nod. "I guess that's our next stop." He looked around and everyone seemed as ready as they'd ever be.

Dean turned to Castiel and said, "Okay, trusty time turner, I guess we're going to California."

When Dean blinked, he could assume by the stone mansion on the hill looming above him that he was at 52341 Oakview Estate Drive. Penelope was still resting in his arms and the iPad was in his hand. From the sound of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" streaming over the air from some car radio down the road and Jermaine Jackson's "Let's Get Serious," which didn't exactly enjoy a lot of radio play past 1985, Dean managed to triangulate the date to at least 1980.

Beyond that there was nothing. It was a beautiful day in Valencia, California and besides Penelope who started to stir and wake, he was completely alone.

* * *

Castiel screamed as he doubled over, gripping his skull in his hands. Trained for a moment just like this, the angel's apprentice quickly gestured to Derek and Spencer with one hand and to Bobby and Diana with the other. They vanished.

A slow clapping was heard from the corner of the room and Sam spun to see a very tall man in a long black coat standing in the shadows. Still clapping he stepped from the shadows and Sam wasn't exactly sure what he was seeing as the man emerged into the sunlight. His face was porcelain white and his eyes were an impossible shade of ice-cold pale blue. His features were distorted and angular like an approximation of what a face should look like. His hands were narrow and his fingers were long. The coat wasn't made from any kind of fabric but was rather a gathering of black storm clouds.

"Bravo," he said. "Impressively fast."

Cas collapsed in agony onto the floor. His vessel was consumed in fits and jerks. He blinked back tears and to the newcomer he simply croaked, "Tehom."

"Hey little brother," the stranger said. "Just checking in. We called for you back in 1888 but strange enough, you were no where to be found."

Sam watched the man with Cas and something twitched in Sam's mind. The man wasn't throwing a shadow.

"That's not a vessel," Sam said. He kept his distance between himself and the stretched man.

The man, Tehom as Cas had called him, tapped his own forehead. "I'm all up here. And apparently, your flesh doesn't have an allergic reaction to my company. How interesting. You're such a, a _child_ and still you can tolerate me."

"I've had practice," Sam replied, constantly throwing quick glances to Cas.

"Oh, Lucy? That infant is a hamster on a wheel in comparison, Samuel."

Sam understood. "You're an Elder."

Tehom gave a small bow.

"What do you want?" Sam asked.

"Oh, just to know this and that like, why would you all be involved in a mission against Aeshma? I mean, Dean Winchester's been off the grid for ages and now the board is lighting up like a Christmas tree, it's all very disturbing. We wanted a talk with Cas but damnedest thing, he honestly avoided us. Just vanished." He shrugged. "He comes to request our aide and then he," Tehom snapped his finger. "Raises some questions."

Blood was starting to flow from Cas' eyes and ears.

"Please, he wasn't avoiding you—"

"Oh, I think he was. I think he had to because now I think I know why." Tehom narrowed his feline eyes at him. "That vessel is easily broken but up here, in this region, the soul is so," he raised his hand and rubbed his fingers and thumbs together like he was feeling a smooth cloth. "Indescribable. Nothing I'm familiar with. That doesn't happen, Samuel."

He stepped closer to Sam but by then, Sam knew it was futile to step away. Tehom, like the other Elders, didn't have a vessel that could contain him. He existed only as a beam into Sam's mind and soul.

"What are you?" He quirked his marble brow and wondered aloud. "What else are the Winchester brothers if not very durable skin to wear?" Sam looked to Cas who just managed to give him a look that told him to say nothing.

"I don't know what you mean," Sam said.

"Hmm," Tehom said before curling his lips. With the motion, Cas was lifted off the ground and splayed wide, his limbs spreading far and tight. "Tell me or I'll make a mess." Cas screamed as the sound of bones breaking and tendons tearing filled the room.

Stop.

The word flashed in Sam's head but he didn't even have to say it as Cas was released and he fell to the floor. Tehom's face snapped to the side as if he'd been hit. Opening his mouth and rotating his jaw, Tehom's gaze went back to Sam. The apprentice looked at him in shock and disbelief.

"I didn't—" he began.

"What are you?" Tehom asked once more but this time his bravado was gone. He seemed truly wary and curious.

"Sam," Cas breathed. They both looked to him. Face covered in blood, Cas' blue eyes caught Tehom's and he said very darkly, "He's seen too much."

The Elder brought his focus back to Sam, understanding Cas' words. He motioned to go but Sam quickly reached out and gripped Tehom's arm. "I can't let you leave," he said, not exactly sure how he was going to manage making him stay.

"Better hope for your sake Castiel's taught you how to survive." Tehom slammed his free hand into Sam's chest and Sam went flying backwards towards the windows. Throwing his hands forward just before he hit the glass and just before Tehom disappeared, Sam latched onto the spirit and pulled him back inside. Sam vanished. He reappeared on the other side of the window and slammed hard into the ground. The specter of Tehom was in the dirt just across from him.

Disembodied angels were more powerful than the mightiest poltergeists. When Dean first met Cas, Cas had nearly killed him by accident and he'd blinded Pamela with just the vision of himself. Care had to be taken.

Sam rolled away and Tehom jumped to his feet in a way that defied the gravity he wasn't subject to. His terrain was Sam's perceptions and the landscape Sam's eyes saw and mind processed.

"You can't keep me here forever. That head of yours will be filled with souls. It'll be Mary Magdalene all over again." He laughed.

"I know I can't," Sam said as he looked to the vision in his periphery and saw Cas standing behind the window glass. He knew what he had to do, what Michael told him he had to do and had the power to do. He didn't know where exactly it was but it had to be there. Just like Dean's manifestations in the past and Spencer's genius, Sam knew his power was there but he also knew that his rebirth in the world had been so few and far between because the power he had was so great and so dangerous. Michael had warned them all what would happen if one of them fell but Sam knew he was talking about him. To see those words of distrust come from his father's lips, even if it hadn't been his father saying it, was hard. Where Dean had met Apsara and Marie and Nishtha, and Spencer had met Immanuel and Jean Louise and would meet Ezekiel, Sam had only seen David and the only thing either of them had going was the companionship of someone who loved them.

Sam was afraid of it, of touching it, of using it. He'd never done well with power but this time he had to. He had been told he had to and the alternative was disastrous. Aeshma was one of these creatures and there were twenty three others.

He was resolved. That thought steadied him. The vision of Dean in Marie's body that morning days ago was enough.

"You're in my head but I didn't give you consent."

"You're not mortal anymore," Tehom reminded him.

"Exactly."

The flesh on the back of Tehom's narrow wrist cracked like crystal and a ray of red light and plume of gold dust streamed from him. The astonishment on his face couldn't be described.

"Only an angel can kill another angel," Sam reminded him with a grin. Another crack formed and it sliced through Tehom like a sword blade. He twisted around as light burst from the gaping gash at his chest. "Well. Angels and a few exceptions." Another crack severed Tehom's arm like a stone statue and his scream wailed in Sam's mind.

Samuel walked towards him; the dark overcast eyes were swallowed in pure shadow. Sam's skin became perfectly translucent and from whatever flesh was exposed he was a map of vessels: veins, capillaries and arteries.

Another crack and Tehom was on the ground, his right leg detached by mid-femur. He'd never felt such pain in his existence. He had no comprehension that such pain even existed. He looked up into the dark eyes and saw eternity there.

"Father . . .?" Tehom whispered, his flesh whirling with red and gold. Sam did not reply to that name. "Who are you?-!" Tehom screamed as his body was ripped in half but he found no comfort in death.

The Wrath of God.

More eternal than Death itself.

"What are you?" The Elder pleaded with harsh whispers.

"Time," Sam replied, his voice darker and deeper than it had ever been, than it could ever have been.

"What?" Tehom panted, the cracks multiplying, turning the already severed pieces of him into dust.

_kalo 'smi loka-ksaya-krt  
_  
"Time," Sam simply repeated.

The one thing that can make an immortal mortal.

Where Spencer was the beginning and Dean carried through during, in the end, even beyond death which was simply a fixed point in anything's existence, beyond that was Time. Time, towering, endless and inescapable. The yawning and all-devouring.

Tehom screamed once more before he became ashes.

Castiel watched him, still from the window. He didn't dare approach him like that. No. Not yet.

Sam closed his eyes and slowed down his thoughts. His skin regained its color and the shadow lifted from his eyes. He'd almost been tempted to see what he could do to extricate himself of Lucifer but the bond of consent was a covenant and not even God broke his promises.

Sam opened his eyes and felt his legs go out as he stumbled backwards. Cas was right next to him to catch him from falling.

"Sam."

"I need to sit," he said. A flutter of wings brought him back to Bobby's den and Sam reclined in the small couch. Castiel stood just to the side, rolling the lingering pain from Tehom's attack from his vessel.

Sam shuddered out an unsteady breath and realized, "That's what Aeshma wants to control, isn't it?"

"It would seem so."

"How did you know I could—?"

"You're an aspect of my Father and Michael said you could. I trusted in that."

Sam sat up a little but his head was spinning. "God that was so much power."

"I've only seen energy like that when I go to witness the singularities."

He frowned, "Wait, black holes?"

Cas nodded.

Sam understood better why Chuck told him not to let Lucifer near him. The power was too great. Sam wasn't sure he should even have it but then he realized, just like Spencer and Dean, he didn't simply have the power, he _was_ the power. He was the source. If he, in all that darkness, tore Dean apart the way he'd just destroyed Tehom, the world, the entire universe, would live in an eternal state of _that_. Sam shivered.

_kalo 'smi loka-ksaya-krt_

_Time I am, destroyer of the worlds._

There were a few times in his life that Sam had been afraid of himself and of the choices he made but, even knowing what he was, seeing the sheer power of it, knowing the darkness of it and knowing absolutely he would never, ever let himself fall into the wrong hands again, he scared himself. He scared himself just by living.

"You should bring everyone back from where you sent them," Cas said, cleaning the blood from his face and clothing.

"Right," Sam silently said. Raising his hand, Bobby and Diana appeared. Bobby looked none too pleased.

"Chichen Itza?" He asked.

"Um," Sam frowned. Was that where he . . . "Sorry. I guess it was the first place I thought of."

Bobby glared at him. "You're telling me the first place you thought to send us was Chichen Itza?-!"

Sam huffed, "Well, that or Machu Pichu, take your pick. I got nervous. At least it wasn't some back alley in nowhere!"

Bobby was about to take him on when Diana tapped his shoulder and arched a brow at him. "Hush up."

Bobby cursed and sighed. "What the hell happened anyway?" he asked.

"Explain in a sec," Sam said. He raised his hand again and brought back Spencer and Derek.

They looked like they'd just escaped the losing side of a dog fight.

"Oh my gosh," Spencer gasped; his glasses were broken and twisted, his lip bloody, his long hair caked in mud. His clothes were torn and ripped in places. Derek was brushing dirt from his clothes and the knuckles on both hands were bleeding. Diana hurried to them.

"What happened to you two?" Sam asked.

Derek looked like he was still riled. "We almost got our asses kicked by a couple of gang bangers, that's what happened. We dropped head first into a drug buy."

"What?" Diana demanded. Cas went to Spencer and healed him. He went to Derek and did the same.

"I don't understand. I—" Sam began. "A drug buy? Where?"

"Some back alley in nowhere," Derek said, cracking his knuckles.

Sam frowned. "Wait, I didn't—"

Spencer shook his head in amazement. "Really?" He asked Derek. "Pretty sure they were speaking Russian. I think it might have been Moscow? It was really dark, so I'm not sure."

Derek sighed, "Okay, Reid. We almost got our asses kicked in some back alley in Moscow. Better?"

Spencer gnawed on his lip.

Sam cursed. "Time zones. Right." He looked up to them. "Sorry."

"What happened?" Spencer asked. He looked to Cas who seemed alright but last time he saw him he was doubled over in pain.

"One of the Elders was here," Sam said.

"I thought they could only get to you when your defenses were down?" Spencer asked Cas.

"When I travel through time I expend a lot of energy. He must have been waiting here for me to open up a bridge. I don't think he was working by order of the council or they would have just called me back to Heaven."

"What happened to him?" Diana asked.

"I took care of it," Sam said. "Don't worry." They all looked to him but no one knew what to ask. Feeling uncomfortable with the attention he was getting, Sam looked to Cas and asked, "You think you're ready for us to join up with Dean?"

Cas self-evaluated and shook his head. "Just a few more minutes." Before his words were even out of his mouth an engine growl was heard faintly in the distance but Bobby knew the sound of a car rolling up to his place.

"Somebody's comin'," he said. Neither demons nor angels would need a car but both sets had human acolytes ready to do their wetwork. Bobby grabbed his shotgun and Derek and Spencer grabbed their weapons from where they'd left them before their travels. Sam and Castiel vanished and reappeared at the windows by the front door.

A black '69 Dodge Charger, sans blower, rumbled its way up the drive. It was glossy and in mint condition and was so familiar to Sam that it was like looking at a photograph of an old friend.

"What is it?" Bobby asked, coming up behind them.

"The Impala's evil twin?" Sam joked. The car pulled up in front of the house and the engine cut off. The driver, obscured by a glare on the windshield, didn't seem in any rush to come up to the house.

The tension inside the Singer home was high.

The car door finally opened and the driver emerged.

"What—" Sam started to say in a tone that expressed his total confusion. He looked to Cas. "I thought you sent—"

"I did," Cas replied, seeing the same scene from the opposite window. With a small amount of observation, Castiel immediately understood what had occurred.

"Do I need a code breaker here?" Bobby demanded.

The driver walked onto the porch and he and Sam locked gazes through the glass. The only coherent thought passing through Sam at that moment was . . . how could he look exactly the same and still manage to look just like Dad?

The doorbell rung.

"It's him," Sam said.

"Him who?" Bobby asked, wondering when he was possibly gonna get a full sentence from either of them.

Castiel turned to Bobby and said, "It's Dean." Before anyone could make sense of that, Sam opened the door.

He stood there, silhouetted by the afternoon. His clothes had changed. They were still quintessentially 'Dean' but they weren't what he'd been wearing just minutes ago. He wore his hair a little longer and a few days worth of strawberry blonde scruff covered his jaw. He watched their faces and just shook his head with a wry grin. "Hey."

Sam looked to his brother and shook his head. "But—"

Dean just smiled and took Sam into a hug. They stayed this way for a bit, Sam not knowing how to respond. Pulling away and looking at Sam like he was re-familiarizing himself he nodded. He looked to Spencer and it was in that moment of eye contact that Spencer could sense what had just happened.

"Dean—" he said but Dean pulled him too into a hug and Spencer said nothing at all.

When he released him, Spencer blinked and tried to fight the tears that were forming in his eyes.

Dean turned to face everyone in the hall. "Didn't know what I'd find here when I came. So . . . do I need to drink watery beer or can I come in?" He asked.

Bobby was just grasping what was going on and seemed absolutely stunned. He waved him in and mumbled, "Two angel guard dogs are better than holy water."

Dean held a thin black leather case out to Spencer and said, "Bet you didn't even notice it was missing."

Taking the case from Dean, Spencer opened it to see the tablet.

"Glad to finally get that thing off my hands. I felt like I was holding the Cyberdyne chip the whole time," he said, attempting a joke. Everyone remained quiet. "Seriously? I spent more time in Hell but you're all freaking out about me being in San Francisco?"

Castiel immediately spoke up. "We can go now. We can fix it—"

"No," Dean said, turning to him. His voice was calm but firm. "You won't."

"But Dean—" Spencer protested.

Derek held out his hand and gripped Reid's shoulder. He and Dean exchanged an understanding. Derek just said, "Penelope."

Dean nodded. "You try and _fix _this and you'll tear apart everything about her." He carefully added, "So I'm asking you to leave it alone."

There wasn't anything that could be argued. Dean was there, Garcia was safe and still who she'd always ever been and the mission still lay before them.

"But—" Sam said, "But what happened?"

Dean shrugged. "Hell if I know. You send somebody back in time and guess what? It catches up." There was only humor there. No heat. No anger. They'd sent him back and completely forgot that time didn't wait for anybody. "I've been on the road all night. I'm gross and I need a shower." He rubbed his chin. "Been trying to see what this looked like but not too sure about it. She said at least it makes me look older. Heh." He smiled before turning to the staircase.

"Dean?-!" Sam called up to him.

His brother gestured to the iPad. "We don't have all day, Sam. Just read it," he said, disappearing up the stairs.

Spencer turned on the computer and looked to the bookshelf. There were dozens of new titles added, most on lore but one, with a stylized pink and bronze cover was definitely not about monster species. He clicked on it to see a title page.

Everyone crowded in around him. Spencer looked to Bobby and said, "I think we'll have to use the printer."

Bobby Singer tore open a new ream of paper as Spencer set up the tablet to the printer. Pages began to spit into the tray and Derek collected them. Holding up the now printed title page he felt his breath catch in his throat. He read it aloud:

"_The Kaleidoscopic Life (so far) of the Indomitable Penelope Maria Garcia."_

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**_feedback is the only way I can tell if you liked it  
save a writer, spare a comment__  
_**


	22. Salvation

**Chapter Twenty Two**

**Salvation**

_Valencia, California, 1980  
_  
Big Bird was her favorite. She called him 'Bird Bird.' There was something about a giant talking yellow best friend that inherently fascinated a three year old, especially a three year old who had never encountered _anything_ like it before. She asked a million and one questions, most of them typical of someone her age, (how do they get in there, Daddy?) but some of the questions were completely unique to her situation, (can we take Bird Bird back with us?) That and, _where's mommy_? occasionally accompanied with a few tears—nothing dramatic but not insignificant in a child who rarely cried as it was—left Dean to feel completely out of his depth.

He understood his dad so much more than he ever had after the first two weeks in Valencia. This wasn't something he'd wish on _anyone_. The actual daily tasks weren't difficult at all, no, that wasn't it. Getting her fed, keeping her clean and happy, making sure she never felt alone, that was all easy for him. Marie had been very thorough and her love was his love, completely. His primary worry was the _knowing_—or the not knowing. He couldn't rely on fate or destiny here. Not now.

Dean couldn't begin to imagine what happened to Cas for him to leave them alone for that long. After the first five minutes Dean began to grasp the severity of the situation. He understood the main points of time travel, even if fiction was his primary teacher. Movement from point to point, as long as the traveler is willing, wouldn't be delayed, by definition. Time is the conduit _and_ the destination. Lateness wasn't something that happened unless a busted DeLorean was in the mix or maybe if Spencer's blue police box made a conscious decision to change dates. As it was, the driver was Cas and the vehicle was Cas. For him to not have made it there with the others meant something terrible must have happened, either at Bobby's place or somewhere along the way. No amount of searching on the iPad in his possession could help him—the narrative ended with his arrival in Valencia. A completely new book in the Book of Campbell and Winchester Gospel series had begun. It was 'The Kaleidoscopic Life (_so far_) of the Indomitable Penelope Maria Garcia.'

After the first five minutes of standing in the street in front of that great house, Dean Campbell fully understood that he and Penny were going to have to figure things out and fast. After the first five minutes he also understood he might be a man living on borrowed time. Hadn't the grown-up Penelope told all her friends her parents were gone? What of that was truth and how much of it was simply a cover story; he had no idea. As it was, he had as much chance surviving the next generation intact as he had in exiting early. This fear, he realized, was normal. It was what his dad had felt every moment of every day; it was what Lisa felt while raising Ben. It was what anyone without an angel in their back pocket felt when bringing up a child.

He knew his influence on her would spare him for a few years at the least, beyond that he had to make sure he'd have her on the path to her future. Again he understood that was a normal fear and responsibility. For the first time in his life, in the middle of the unlikeliest of situations, all of his doubts and fears didn't rest on monsters, evil, Heaven or Hell but on the extraordinariness of the fearfully mundane.

Dean stood there, computer in hand, with his little girl in his arms, just a regular guy for the first time in all his adult life.

From somewhere beyond the road behind him, down towards the neighboring estate, he could hear an engine try and fail to turn over accompanied by some cursing. Penny was stirring and he looked down to her. He evaluated the simple facts: not only did he have no ID, no money, and no identity, the little girl in his arms was in a nightie. Oh, and add to that the fact that since a blood test wouldn't convince anyone she was his, he was headed to pedo-prison if he didn't get her into some clothes. He started to move towards the engine sounds.

"Any port in a storm, right?" He muttered to himself.

"I don' wanna sceep," she muttered on his shoulder, eyes still closed, hearing what she wanted to hear.

He remembered having many conversations with Sam that began the same exact way. "Tired?"

"Naw a lot."

"So you're a little tired?" He asked, twisting her words around.

"Naw a lotta tired," she yawned.

"If you're a little tired—"

Opening here eyes, she poked his cheek and wiggled the skin at his jaw. "Daddy, schtop."

"Stop what?"

"Da mommy ting. Mommy doz dat. It not funny."

"Not funny?"

Ignoring him, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and then went on to rubbing his hair and then compared it to her own. The blonde that ran through her brown was the same as the blonde at the tips of his. As she occupied herself, Dean saw a large white truck half parked in the street and half parked in someone's massive driveway. Painted in red on the side of the truck were the words 'Salvation Army.'

"Praise be to Chuck," he said before looking up to the sky. "Sorry for all those times I harassed you to send me a sign. This makes up for it a billion times over." Just then, a black cat skittered past them with a yowl. Dean growled and stared a moment at the fluffy clouds. "Hilarious. You should do stand up."

The truck was nose first into the winding drive and its loading doors were opened out towards the street. Nearer the house he could see probably three men just beyond the open front door of the garage. On the curb were yard signs advertising a neighborhood clothing drive for the Salvation Army, sub-tagged, "We are our brother's keeper."

Peering to all lines of sight, he saw he had a positional advantage but it wouldn't last long as the men by the garage would be coming down the drive at any moment. If he was going to move he'd have to move fast and know what he was going for. There was no chance he'd let Penny stand on the sidewalk for any amount of time over thirty seconds. Glancing into the truck he was taken back by just how many bags were in there and by the fact that all were opaque black garbage bags leaving no visual clues as to what they contained.

"No recycling? Really? In the Cali burbs? Really? How far back did we go?"

He could only risk grabbing one bag and with his luck he'd get hold of _grandpa's pajamas.  
_  
"Remember when I said I didn't need a sign?" Dean began when he heard the shredding of plastic behind him. Across the street, on the opposite curb, were a few bags labeled '_donations' _next to another 'Salvation Army' yard sign. The house beyond was gated with a line of sparse hedging breaking up the jail-like feel that accompanied all gates. One of those bags was being torn open by the same black cat that had run past them. Dean walked towards it and the cat darted away. A few of the contents were pushing out from the hole. From the opening he could see the colors lime green and purple. He was tempted to do a refrain from 'Hallelujah.' Inside the bags were all sorts of freshly washed clothes in her size. Looking into the next bag he saw almost an entire wardrobe in his size complete with shoes. In a third, rather geometrically outlined bag was a donation of two worn but functional Samsonite suitcases. One was a regular hard body on wheels and the other was an overnight duffle-type bag.

Dean waved his hand a little, like a magician about to conjure something, saying, "And then there was pie." He waited a moment. The cat hissed from somewhere close. "Okay, never mind. I'm grateful."

"Ohhh, belle," Penny said in awe once she was outfitted behind one of the tall hedges. She'd never seen clothes those colors before and she _loved _them. "C'est bon!"

Speaking in French, Dean told her she looked very nice but she needed to stick to English for now. From what Kitty had said, Marie likely hadn't taught the girls Spanish and from what Derek and Spencer had said Penelope didn't know any Spanish.

"Why?"

"You're a Garcia." It was counter-intuitive, he knew that.

"What's Garthia?"

"What do I—what does your mommy call you?"

"Penelope Marie le Blanc."

"Well, from now on you're Penelope Maria Garcia."

"Okay," she nodded assertively. Tugging on his ear she screwed up her face and asked, "But what's Garthia?"

The curiosity of a three year old was indomitable. He pointed to himself, "I'm Garcia."

"Oh!" She said as if suddenly it all made sense. "Daddy is Garthia. Penny is Garthia too."

Dean knew he'd have to watch his accent. There was this girl, a flamenco dancer from Barcelona that he just never really forgot, and then all those pirate ghost haunts off the coast of Florida that was muddying everything. Summer vacations in the Winchester household involved Castilian dialects, Spanish gold, and exorcisms written during the inquisition.

Veracruz, he said to himself. Veracruz. No '_th'_ instead of '_c_.'

Mexico had been a second home to them, especially when John had to lie low for a few weeks, sometimes months at a time. Dean always assumed his dad was ducking the law but later on he was clued in from some old 'acquaintances' of John Winchester's that the law wasn't the only thing he avoided back in the day. Handling himself against demons or other hunters was one thing; doing it with his kids in tow wasn't anything he'd risk. Work wasn't hard to find, ghosts and monsters being universal things, so the change meant very little to them as one motel was the same as any other with the added benefit of getting soda with actual sugar.

The sound of the uncooperative engine filled the quiet mid-spring day again and Dean scooped his little girl up in his arms, bags packed, iPad tucked away. Broken down Salvation Army truck? Almost as literal as the placards in the front yards. He came around towards the front end of the truck to see the driver, in a red shirt, fiddling under the hood. Another man was peering in after him but clearly oblivious to what the ailment could have been. The third man was just shaking his head with a box of tools in his hands.

"Stick a fork in it," the tool holder said. "It was very old and is very dead." He was barely past forty and fit, very blonde and of average height. His look said golf courses and old money like Thurston from Gilligan's Island but his accent was pure Chicago. He looked like he wouldn't know a hammer from a wrench but from the grease under his nails and the well-worn look of the tools Dean realized that assumption would be a bad bet.

"How can you even tell?" The oblivious man asked. He was about Dean's age (the physical, not chronological age). He looked like a younger clone of the tool-man separated only by a few years. The tool-man rolled his eyes and Dean instantly placed their relationship as brothers.

Beyond their line of sight, the driver poked under the hood and looked like he had suffered through the first half of a _tedious _conversation that was gearing up for a second equally tedious half. His need for escape was frustrated by the truck's refusal to operate. The name tag on his chest read Sgt. Manolo Calderon. He was tanned but not artificially so. His dark hair was in a military cut. He seemed to be between Dean's age and the tool-man's.

Dean saw his in. He approached them. They looked up towards him but with Penny in his arms their initial impression of him was passive which was always a benefit. To Sgt. Calderon Dean asked if they needed help. To the man's credit he didn't look as exasperated as Dean could sense him to be. The fight inside to be gracious was only momentary as he smiled and nodded.

"I'll take this as a sign," he said with a laugh and a hint of an accent. That was Dean's second in.

He set Penny down and told her to stay close. He looked over to the sergeant and said in what his cover now demanded his native language to be, "Can't even talk to her anymore." It was confidentially said as he stood beside the man and looked in on the engine.

The sergeant laughed and nodded, replying in like, "I have three myself. Pretty much speaking to blank walls. Now the only time they hear Spanish is when their language teacher says it or when I'm mad."

A cursory examination of the engine led Dean to believe the tool-man's assessment was correct. Bobby had one of these in the yard to practice on and it was of the middle breed of American motors that were notorious for ending the Detroit legacy. "Well, he's right; this one's headed to the bone yard but I can get it started for you so you can get back, okay?"

The sergeant said in a very low voice, "Just get me out of here. All they talk about is investment this, money that. It's like falling into the Wall Street Journal hogtied."

With a chuckle, Dean turned to the tool-man and requested a file.

"It's dead," the man asserted, handing over the file.

"Then the ghost's ready for one last adventure." Dean removed rust from a set of connectors. He hand-stripped some wires and attached the leads. "Hop in, get it turned over and don't go past twenty or you'll burn out." The sergeant got in the cab and tried the ignition. Without any argument, the truck started. Sgt. Calderon jumped out and gave Dean's hand a good shake along with several compliments.

Turning to the other two men he said he'd be back for the rest of the neighborhood's collections the next day. He jogged around back, closed the gate and went into the cab.

"I mean it, not over twenty," Dean reminded him.

"Or burn out, got it." The sergeant confirmed. He was almost too excited to leave to even ask but he collected himself long enough to inquire, "When you say burn out—"

"Ball of fire right under your hood."

The sergeant paled a little and nodded. Carefully pulling out of the drive he inched his way down the street. Penny was in the middle of the giant front yard running sprints and giggling. Dean turned to the men. Both were looking at him with some form of awe. The tool-man's was edged in curiosity, suspicion, and respect. The oblivious man probably would have worn the same look if someone changed a spark plug.

"How did you figure that?" The tool-man asked. "I've worked half a dozen of those engines and every one of them's been bricks in that condition."

"It's not exactly a fix, though, right? It's not like it'll be able to hit a highway in that condition."

"Still," the tool-man insisted.

Dean could feel the interest mixed heavily with surprise and tinged in suspicion. He decided to play it to his advantage. "Six doesn't give you a full range. I've seen more than that in my time. I was in-house at a distributor in Houston that replaced their whole fleet with them. I'm spending the next five years making sure deliveries are getting made on time even if it means each one is trailing a line of smoke behind it. You have to compromise some things for performance," he said with a shrug.

The oblivious one chimed on, "Like safety?" His accent wasn't Chicago at all. They looked at him. "Ball of fire under the hood's a little prohibitive."

The tool-man shook his head and Dean watched as the ice broke. Tool-man laughed. "A little?" He gave Dean the once over and then to Penny who was cracking herself up beyond belief with a few blades of grass. He then looked to the suitcase and overnight bag. "Where are you headed?"

The story was one he'd been formulating as soon as he knew he'd need one. "I had a job for the season all lined up a little ways back but we show up and," he waved his hand like he was sifting smoke. He made a futile little move of his shoulders. "I guess its back to the drawing board."

The oblivious one asked, "Why not get a ride in the donation truck?"

Both Dean and the tool-man gave him a worried look as if something were slightly off with him. Tool-man glanced to Dean and said, "Never mind Marc. My brother still has to fully grasp the idea of not mixing fire ball and," he gestured over to Penny, "kid."

Marc rolled his eyes and then nodded. "I'm always assuming the possibility that people _don't _die in a gasoline fueled inferno. How horrible." Dean chuckled. He might be oblivious but he had a sense of humor.

Tool-man extended a welcome to Dean and they shook hands. "Harold Specter."

"Dean Garcia."

"Any relation to Jerry?" It was meant as a joke but it suddenly hit Dean that Jerry Garcia was still alive and Dean could, _theoretically_, see the Dead play . . . _live_. He must have zoned out on the realization when Harold laughed. "Not a fan, then?"

John Lennon was still alive.

"I—I, um, yeah, sorry. Just been up all morning. That's my," he didn't miss a beat but it didn't escape him that he was about to refer to her as his, "daughter. Penelope."

Harold nodded. He seemed to consider the spot the truck was just in and then he looked back to Penny before asking, "What kind of seasonal work?"

"Driver. Mechanic. It's the timeshares; people come up here for the summer," he had a high percentage of that being true. His dad used the same cover more than once in neighborhoods just like that one.

Marc's eyes lit up and he gestured to Harold, "Harry's driver just retired. Oh my God, he finished moving his stuff out this morning. That's so weird!"

Harry gave his brother a 'hush' glance but Dean gave him an expectant one.

"Daddy! Look!" Penny said and the three of them looked after her as she ran up to them with a butterfly in her palm. She didn't see the second one on her shoulder or the third one following close behind in a spiral trail. When she stopped in front of them she did a little chicken dance she had definitely learned from Dean via Marie.

Harry looked like he was mentally pulling teeth. "Where're you from?"

"Texas," Dean lied knowing Harry expected him to lie.

"Better make sure your papers say that," Harry mumbled. "Do you have any references?"

"None you can call," Dean said with a 'c'mon, seriously?' look.

"Of course not," he said. He only gave Penny a final once over before his mind established that the child was clean, happy, gregarious, and all of that recommended her dad more than a call would any way. Plus, "Truth is, what you did with that engine was . . . pretty damn amazing so whatever your CV is, I really don't need to see it. I don't have to see much of anything but you better have everything in order just in case, got it?"

"Gotten," Dean said knowing he could build himself a credible identity even using the middle-ages tech that was available. He didn't even think the color copier existed yet, but a plus was the dearth of security features in standard IDs. Hell, the green cards from back then would be easier to forge than a high school ID in his own time. Add the possibility that he might be able to use the tablet in its mountain-moving ways to actually get into government systems and move things around . . . "Won't be a problem."

Harry fought off his lingering doubts and gestured back up towards Oakview Estate Drive. "I live up there. This is Marc's place."

"That truck picked the wrong drive to die on," Marc said rather happily. "I feel no shame for calling in the cavalry."

"Okay, looks like my Saturday just filled up." Harry turned to Marc and said, "Do what you have to, but be careful okay? This is my life we're talking about." Marc reluctantly nodded and waved goodbye to his brother. Dean and Penny did the same. They went up the road back towards the 'castle.'

"It's ridiculous, right?" Harry asked with a bit of a laugh as they neared the massive house. "It was the model home back in the forties. Weird mix of gothic and deco. When the development filled up, they sold it to a movie producer. When they found out what he was producing wasn't exactly family friendly stuff, the neighborhood made it a little too uncomfortable to stay. If on the off chance you recognize any of the rooms from any particular clandestine viewing, understand that wasn't me."

"Got it," Dean said, finally getting the punch line. "So, what do you do?"

"Technology. Computer systems. Video games. Ever played Pong? Like that but the next level."

Dean fought to frown thoughtfully instead of grin like a madman.

"I know, the concept is wild, video games, right? But it's going to be big. The systems, call them consoles, those will be huge but can you imagine a full megabyte of game play on a home computer system? That's the future."

With a nod, Dean said, "I believe you."

"I commute to the city weekdays." Dean assumed he was talking about L.A. but he'd have to check the map on the tablet. They walked onto the property and under a wide stone archway off to the left that led to the expansive red tiled courtyard. The stone wall wrapped around the sides and back of the house in a hugging horseshoe curve. The house was settled somewhat away from the wall so a nice wide path in Spanish tile swept the borders. It had the feel of an old Italian city on the side of a hill as the stone was overgrown with green ivy and fragrant vines and on the opposite side there was the _made to look old _architecture of the enormous home. A little into the wide path it opened up to a spacious patio area. Into the side of the house was a three car garage. Off to the right was a black cast iron spiral staircase that led to above the garage. It was up there that Harry led them. The front door opened up to a small but comfortable minimally furnished space that was the living room.

"Two bedrooms, bath, and kitchenette. Salary is three hundred a month, room included. You can go to my doctor and dentist too, no problem." The pay was generous, especially for the times, and the place was nicer than the places he grew up in by a magnitude of fifty. Medical and dental was a coup.

"I got no idea what to say," Dean said, meaning it. Minutes ago he was lost in time with a kid and nowhere to go and now he had a home, salary, security . . . he may have said it to Harry but all of it went to Chuck.

"Say you'll put down your bags so you and Penelope can get something to eat in the house." Dean settled the bags and held Penny's hand as they wound down the staircase and went into the side entrance.

Inside wasn't nearly as imposing as outside but it was clearly professionally decorated to look that way. The colors were subdued and heavy on the white and pastel which probably couldn't be avoided in any home during the 80's, even at the start of the decade. "Marc's in the family business, real estate, banking. He would have taken this place for himself but he couldn't justify it when we were willing to pay. I like that it's like a fortress, less distractions." He led them into the kitchen where an apron clad woman was emptying a dish washer. She was about Dean's age, perhaps younger. With dark skin and curly hair done up in a loose bun, she studied the new stranger in an odd way, as if she'd expected someone and she was just making certain he was the one she expected. She felt very familiar to Dean, he couldn't place from where or why but from the moment he saw her he knew there was some unexplainable connection there.

"This is my anchor in all things," Harold said as an introduction.

She commented, "Anchor? What's that supposed to imply?" But she said it with a playful smile.

"Katherine Pearson this is Dean Garcia and his daughter Penelope. He's taking over for Burt."

She extended her hand to him and the moment Dean held it he felt that electric tingle of magic seeking like-magic.

"You can talk to me. Harry doesn't speak a single word of French," she said in that language with a convincingly false smile on her face. Penny's eyes lit and she desperately wanted to talk to the new lady who reminded her of her mommy but she just clung onto Dean and seemed excited.

Dean's defenses wanted to push back purely by instinct but that part of him that was still a fifteen year old mage calmed him. He put on an equally false smile as if he'd just met an old school friend on the street but couldn't remember their name. Harry seemed lost.

"Who are you?" Dean asked.

"Le Blanc."

Of course. The le Blanc line hadn't ended with Diana and Mary Campbell. They had simply been one of the many branches of that line. He remembered from the family tree that they'd even had cousins in China.

"Why are you here?" He asked.

"I don't really know; can't know too much about the future I suppose. From my family's copy of her spell book, there was just that message for me, written by Granmamma herself," she said, as if he should know who it referenced but he had a feeling she was talking about Marie. "I could feel your energy the minute you walked through the threshold." He noticed that she had referred to the spell book as 'hers' and not as his so he could assume she didn't know the truth about him. Whether that was a mark against her personally or just a security measure being that copies of the book would pass several hands through several generations, he didn't know. Given that his primary concern was Penelope's protection, he aimed against full disclosure.

"How long have you been—?"

"Eight years."

"Eight years?" He said before remembering that Harry was staring at them like they were Martian. He was glad he hadn't slipped into English and just started laughing. Playing along, she started to as well.

"You know each other?" Harry asked.

Dean ironed out their cover with her. "You've seen me around a string of summers, driving around the vacation crowd."

"Decent, courteous, blah blah, you need a character reference, got it," she said before turning to Harry. "You've never seen him around? Well, I'm not surprised," she turned to Dean as if in confidence, "Lives like a hermit." She turned to Harry. "He's the summer taxi service, I swear." She turned to Dean. "I had a letter; Old Miss Granger died in April," he assumed a look of crushed shock as if that was supposed to mean something. To Harry she said, "She once told me she'd take him back to England if she could."

All this added to Dean's bona fides in Harry's eyes, especially as Ms. Granger had been a cantankerous old termagant. He looked to Dean, "French?"

"My mom was Creole, my dad was half Anglo." And a greater truth was never told. Harry seemed completely pacified. All his worries about the new stranger were erased. There was no one in the world he trusted more than Katherine and her recommendation wrote gospel.

The sounds of running feet were heard and a moment later a girl of about ten and a smaller, slightly rounder boy of perhaps eight ran into the kitchen. They stopped dead when they saw the stranger and what they, in their infinite wisdom, considered a 'baby.'

"Jess, Harve, what did I say about running in the house?"

"Sorry, Kathy," the boy said.

"Sorry, mama," the girl said. Dean was absolutely taken back by the little girl. He recognized hers as the face he used to see in the mirror growing up centuries ago. This was no small family resemblance. A person knew themselves and he had been Marie le Blanc. That girl had Marie le Blanc's face with the only exception being the eyes which were brown and a little wider. He even looked to Penelope to see if there was a flash of recognition but she only knew her mother in a body that would be eight years older.

Harry gestured to Dean and then to the kids. "Dean this is my son, Harvey, and Katherine's daughter, Jessica. Kids, this is Dean and Penelope Garcia. Dean's taking over for Burt." The kids said _hi_. They spied what they'd run in for and grabbed a bag of chips off the counter and were about to run back from whence they came when Harry said, "Maybe show Penelope around?"

Harvey shrugged. Jessica nodded. Dean looked to Penny and said, "Wanna go?" Vigorously nodding, he took that as a yes. He let her go and she barreled towards the others. She linked hands with Jessica and said,

"You look like my mommy."

"Thanks?" Jessica said before they left out of the kitchen.

"Kathy, can you show Dean around?" He asked with a look of pleading that fully anticipated a 'no.' "I might be able to salvage more of the day than I thought," he added as a justification.

She huffed with a grin, "When you ask like that I'm inclined to be busy."

"You're the best," he said. He shook Dean's hand again and exited the kitchen.

Dean and Katherine were left alone. There was a lot that needed to be said and asked but neither knew where to begin. All Dean really knew for sure was that he was alone and his main concern was for his little girl. He knew the monster waiting for her and he knew what it was capable of. He knew that pain, that nightmare. He would do anything to spare Penelope that horror. The woman standing before him could be his one ally or someone he would have to take care of.

"My girl, Jess. You looked at her like you knew her. And then that message for me written before I was even a thought? What's going on, Dean?"

He had no idea how much to trust her but he had to figure that out and fast. Talking wouldn't help and he was disinclined to torture. Fight or flight. Flight or fight. Tick tock.

Marie had given him her love and he used it to guide him. He had to protect his child and it was there that something inside of him finally emerged. It was a center of strength he'd seen Apsara, and Nishtha draw from. It was the source of Marie's power. He wasn't ready yet, not for the full overwhelming force of it, but he tapped as much of it as he'd need to settle the immediate question.

"You're from Kitty's line?" He asked. She nodded. The Marie inside of him instantly searched her face for a sign of her sister. He immediately saw it and realized that was why she had felt familiar.

He went to the sink and poured a tall glass of water, whispering over it as he did.

"You think I might be a demon?" Kathy asked, taking his whispers to be a prayer.

He said nothing to her. He turned, his eyes downcast to the floor, and he saw the magic in his mind. He tapped that reservoir of power and used it to form a foundation for the spell, a container that would lead to its execution and manifestation.

"If you want me to drink it I will," she said, feeling awkward in the silence.

Glancing up to her his mossy green eyes now glowed the color of verdant grass. The freckles that had dotted his body since birth dilated, growing in size until they covered him completely turning him the color of soil. At his feet wisps of vegetation began to grow from the rough tile.

The full glass outstretched in his hand soundlessly exploded and the water rushed in a lightning fast rippling wave towards Kathy. She screamed but she was fully enclosed before a whisper escaped. The water had formed a transparent shell around her in the form of a sphere. The glass turned to crystal-like dust and assembled in a hyper-reflective formation of a three-dimensional Devil's Trap. The prismatic rainbow sheen it made in the sunlight was breathtaking.

"I knew you weren't a demon when we shook hands," Dean said in a voice that was fully not his own. The gruffness was gone and replaced by an authoritative softness, which seemed at first like a contradiction to her before she recognized how normal it was; it was exactly how she spoke to Jessica and Harvey. How her own mother had spoken to her. "This was to hash out if I could trust you." He held out his hand again. The dust and water rushed back towards him, the glass reassembling as if it hadn't even been chipped. "Nobody ever needed a demon inside them to lie."

Kathy only gaped. That was a magic she wasn't accustomed to. Magic she never imagined was possible. It was beyond anything she'd ever experienced. "Who are you?"

Dean spoke without really thinking when he said, "Life." That held no meaning to Kathy until she looked around the kitchen. The potted plants were completely overgrown, leaves pooled on the ground, ivy was creeping in through the open windows and at Dean's feet, that small bit of vegetation was now a collection of onion grass, lilies, and a lotus. _Life_. The source of all magic. The spirit of nature itself. Looking at all of it, Dean was less shocked than he should have been but part of him felt like he was running on auto-pilot as it was. He knew he should be terrified. He should be fighting against this thing, this strange alien thing that wasn't him but, God, it felt so normal, so much more him than he ever felt in his skin. He should be scared of the power but the power _was _him.

"Can you? Trust me?" She asked, anxiety rolling through her.

"You'd already be dead," Dean said with a shrug, emptying the water into the sink and placing the glass down to drain and dry.

The sphere. Whatever it was it had evaluated her and she was found worthy. She could have died and of course, it made sense. It was the basis of nature, of magic, of all energies. One thing becomes another and in that becoming is the process of life and death. Life was dependent on survival, contingent on death. When people spoke the name of Mother Nature oftentimes it is said in reverence but most of the time her name is called in pure awesome terror. Kathy was sufficiently terrified.

Dean, his answer received, knowing he had at least one ally, an ally he would eventually send to himself sometime in the past, pushed against the power and uprooted its hold over him. It was as painful as pulling a hundred year old oak tree up by its base. All that was left was a cold, dead feeling. The plants almost immediately browned and withered. They became husks and then bone-dry dirt in seconds. Dean stumbled to the kitchen table, somehow managed to sit down and essentially crashed as his forehead fell to the table.

Feeling both the need to run, to grab the kids and just go as far and as fast as possible, and the need to cling onto this new wonderful thing, Kathy settled her fear and rushed over to Dean. His skin was no longer dark and his open eyes were no longer glowing bright, brilliant green. He stared out blankly without focus towards nothing in particular. He looked drained of life and all color. He was breathing hard and just as he was about to speak blood started to pour from his nostrils. His eyes began to roll to the back of his head.

Kathy jumped up and pulled a few paper towels, wetting them with cold water. She helped him sit up and held his head back as she pressed the paper to his nose. She looked him over. His eyes were rimmed in darkness, as if he hadn't slept in days or he'd just been in a fight. He was as white as the towels. Shivers ran through him. "What's wrong?" She asked.

_Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain  
_  
When Life chose death in the breaking of the first seal a wound was created. It was a wound that marked him. It was why the wild weather patterns that began with the breaking of the seals had steadily gotten more pronounced. The Earth was boiling in hellfire. Nature was broken. Life was broken. He was broken.

He understood that was why Michael told him that it was his job to take care of Aeshma. Not Sam's job, not Spencer's job. His. The one who began it had to end it. Dean had to fight to prove he saw worth in himself, to prove that he believed that he deserved to live, that Life was willing to keep living. The fight was purely symbolic; the power he held, _hell_, the power Sam and Spencer also held, was impossible for the fallen angel to overcome. There was no fight, not really. The challenge wasn't the physicality but the _mindset_. This war had always been a mission to break them, hearts and souls. It began with the killing of their grandparents. Then it was murdering Mary Winchester. It was drawing their father into a nightmare world he hadn't been prepared for. It was killing Sam, kidnapping Spencer, and Dean's deal. It was filling them with so many issues and insecurities that none of them would feel perfectly worthy sufficiently long enough to do battle in the spiritual realm. It was how Spencer fell to addiction, how Sam fell to Ruby and then to Lucifer, and how Dean had never thought himself deserving of anything resembling true love and devotion leading him to fall to Alistair.

Spencer survived because Chuck _bodily _intervened and paved the way for him to make friends from colleagues. Sam had always been buffered by Dean. He had a foundation of love he could fall back on and in his greatest moment of challenge it was a loving thought of his brother that pulled him back from the brink.

As for Dean, every previous incarnation of him had a vibrant will to live and deep self-confidence whereas for much of his own life, Dean felt he'd had little worth and was simply passing time until some boogey or another eventually got him. He had no fear of death because he had no love of life. He had never lived for himself; he never saw the point. Only recently had he been learning, extending himself, his love for Lisa and Ben helping to show him that he was needed and cared for not because of what he could do for them, but because of what he meant to them. But the events of the last few days had essentially erased all his gains. He had been used in the worst way; he was a means to an end. Once again he'd felt like nothing. Nothing at all.

The evil in their lives had built stumbling blocks throughout their maturation. It had all been so carefully organized and choreographed to take whatever their strengths were and make them weaknesses. Dean's personal challenge in this journey was different from Sam's, where his brother had to learn to control power, to subdue it and not allow it to control him, and different from Spencer's where his cousin had to learn to be sure of himself, to assert himself without fear of reprisal. Dean had to somehow learn to love himself. It was his only armor, his one defense. He had to do that before he faced off with the monster that had torn him apart. He would have to face that thing in battle and know he was _absolutely worthy_. Life had to reclaim life to close the seal because the seal was etched on his soul. It was his wound.

That was a lot to ask by Meg's deadline of midnight, even with a few more dates in the past to meet Ezekiel and a grown up Jean Louise. There just wasn't enough time to heal that wound and rewrite his view of himself and his outlook on life. He was too closed, too bitter; too broken.

At least . . . there hadn't been enough time until that moment. Until that moment he had never felt truly needed with Sam being away at school and then superpowered and finally an angel, Spencer having his team as his family, and Lisa and Ben being a complete unit before he joined them. Until that moment he'd felt like surplus. Now it was Penelope that depended on him for everything and he loved her with everything he had. He also apparently had a generation to forget about the monsters that had overrun his life. He had just been given a lifetime to rebuild, to heal, and to find worth. Dean didn't consider it in those terms but his heart felt it deeply. Chuck was letting him rest.

"Nothing's wrong," he quietly said.

Kathy sat down across from him. "Bull."

He smiled. "Fine, how about, don't try water and airbending on an empty stomach?" The quizzical look she gave him was classic. "What did the note say?" He asked, shifting the subject. It took her a moment to understand what he was asking. After what she saw, the note seemed the least important.

"Why?"

Taking a breath, Dean said, "So I know what to write."

Another quizzical look welcomed him. She completely missed the connection for a moment before she understood. Or at least she thought she understood but it was too fantastic a proposition to even be rational. She stared at him, having nothing to compare to but looking as if she were seeking out something. "You're not saying you're . . . _Marie_? There's no way you're . . ." she stared harder and simply breathed out the name everyone had called the ancestress and matriarch of their family, "Granmamma?"

That wasn't something Dean heard everyday. He lifted his hand and waved it in a weak little motion. "Hey."

Most of the rest of the hour passed in a complete blur for Katherine Pearson. Dean could tell he shouldn't ask too many questions as she was completely blinkered. As she showed him around the house she gave him terse answers to his sparse questions. Harry's wife? Childbirth. Dead. Mr. Pearson? Vietnam. Dead. How did you end up here? The note. Be at the Magnus Jazz Club in Chicago at 12:32am, January 22, 1972.

Now it was Dean's turn to be quizzical. It was then that they stepped into the music room. Against the wall was a massive collection of LPs in a shelving system that spanned the entire length and width of the wall.

"Before he discovered microchips, Harry was a composer. Played some too. He says music, especially Jazz, isn't any different from coding but I couldn't say."

Dean went to the records and flipped through a few. Art Tatum, Peggy Lee, Lester Young, Count Basie, Duke Ellington. Harry had taste, Dean could give him that.

"And all you had to do was be at the club?"

"That's all the note said. It's the sort of thing you anticipate for years, you know? I knew since I was old enough for my mom to tell me about it. The day before, I left Jess with my mom, got on a plane from New York, rented a car and was there about to get out when there he was, trying to get a cab. It was cold, windy, and it had just started to rain. He looked, I don't know. Panicked? He obviously needed a ride."

"What did you think?"

"At that moment?" She laughed. "In my gut I _knew _I was there for him but then I thought: my entire life was a set-up to deliver some guy from point A to point B? Hell no." She sighed. "Of course, it could also be that he was crazy and I had to stop him like a hero from the comics. I was really hoping that would be it. I'd spent a long time on defensive magic only to have to worry about defensive driving? I called out to him, asked him if he needed a ride. He practically jumped in the car."

"Where was he headed?"

"The hospital. Harvey had just been born and his wife was in trouble, that's all they said. He was actually in the middle of a set when the manager got the call. When we got there, she was gone. I stayed with him. He didn't have anybody in the city, neither did I really. I barely knew anything about him and he knew less about me but he was a mess. I knew what it was like to lose somebody like that." She got quiet. Gesturing him out of the room, they continued the tour.

"So, you . . ." he began, not sure how to suss out their relationship. "How does this work?"

"We're friends. Family, really, but not like _that_," she said, recognizing the implication his eyes were making. She didn't want to discuss this with a stranger much less a stranger who was also her Granmamma. "We didn't exactly meet at a time to form that kind of relationship."

"Purely platonic?" Dean asked, not buying it. "You live with him—"

"We live with each other. We raise the kids together."

"You're in an apron."

"I'm not the maid. I pay half the bills in this house."

"Day job?"

"Attorney. I'm a junior partner at my firm."

"You've _got_ to be kidding me. You're in an _apron_," he repeated.

"I don't want to mess up my clothes. And Harry's fine with cars and circuits but he's clumsy as hell with dishes." She could still feel him studying her. "Really? Is this sexism, racism, or some form of feminism that says once I get a career I can't ever be in an apron, 'cause I'd like to know how we're starting out here. You want a resume break down 'cause you can already see I'm a woman. Check that box off. I did my undergrad at Stanford thank you very much."

That was a familiar name. "Stanford?"

"Mmm. And my law degree comes from Harvard."

"Harvard?" Another familiar name.

"Is there an echo? All the le Blanc's, if so academically inclined, go to Harvard. You should know this."

He snorted. "Yeah, tell it to my GED."

She couldn't help it. The whole morning had been a confusion of terror and beauty, strangeness, and suddenly offense that just hearing that come from his lips with no pretension doubled her over in laughter. "Sorry. I get defensive. It's just being here, not really knowing why, wondering if being with Harry _is _the mission, I don't know. And the not knowing is the worst. Every stranger that comes to that door, I analyze, I turn inside out. I have a Devil's Trap made of tree roots around the entire property. I don't do well with challenge."

Tree roots? He was impressed. "It's okay," he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "We'll figure this out."

"Wait, you don't know?"

"Me? I'm stuck here. I have no idea. Well, I have some idea. Maybe."

"Stuck?"

He smirked. "Is there an echo?"

She rolled her eyes. "So, Garcia? I know the family tree pretty well and I don't remember a 'Garcia' branch."

"It's a cover. Family name is Campbell."

"Campbell?" She asked and looked like something wasn't adding up. He was too old or too young to be a part of the extended Campbell clan and she knew for a fact that, "Annie and Mimi don't have a bro—" She began when her eyes widened but his widened before hers did. They pointed to each other and said on top of the other—

"Wait, you know Diana and Mary Campbell?"

"Wait, you're Dean? Baby Dean?"

He immediately frowned. "_Baby Dean_?"

"Oh my God! Baby Dean!" She exclaimed looking him over as if it were the first time she saw him.

"Stop calling me that."

"Your mom sent me photos of you! Oh my God!" Kathy threw her arms around him and hugged him. "We're cousins. Well, you already knew that, but your mom and me, we grew up together! In Lawrence!"

He was still in a hug so tight it could break his back when he gasped, "You don't seem surprised."

"You short circuited that a while back." She pulled away from him. "You're one this year. _One_. How is that even . . . wow. You look just like Mimi so I'm not even surprised. Time travel. Ohh. Makes sense."

"It does?"

She shrugged like she didn't care. "I guess. I don't know. Who cares?" She pulled him in again. "Look at you." Pulling away again she said, "Our family is the weirdest!"

Yes. Yes, it was.

"Does your mom know you're here? Does Annie?"

He held up his hands in a futile gesture. "They can't."

"Right. Got it. Oh wow. You're almost as tall as your dad."

_Almost_. "You know my dad?" He had to fight not to say _knew_.

"Of course I know your dad. Wallace, my husband, well they all signed up at the same time. The three of them were inseparable."

"Three?"

"John, Wally, and Dave. It, of course, was Dave's idea if he didn't already tell you. Just because he saw his dad in service, he _had _to be in service. You'd think he'd take after his mom's side of the family if he really wanted to chase danger, but no, instead of wanting to be like his uncle Samuel and hunt monsters he had to be just like his dad. Inborn Italian machismo, maybe?" He barely had time to shrug when she continued, "And I'm not talking as someone who's been spoiled by living in Manhattan but I think his antsy-ness stemmed from his formidable years being spent on Long Island. I mean, really? What were his parents thinking?"

He had no idea what to say. She was definitely from Kitty's line, that couldn't be denied. It was clear that Kathy had been in what was equivalent to a deep cover operation for the last eight years and apparently she hadn't seen any of her family in that long. She was starved for the company of someone who understood their world. He did the best he could by throwing out a conversation starter of, "Um, so . . . Dave's a Campbell?" Another Campbell boy. Think of that.

She paled and her hands began to shake just a little. "Oh God . . . you don't know him? Oh God, something happened to him?" She looked hurt. Truly and honestly hurt. "Of course the thickheaded hothead would get himself—" she couldn't finish her words.

"No, sorry, wait. Sorry. Maybe I do? I don't know. Dave? Dave. Um, I'm not good with mom's side of the family."

"Why not?" She asked, a new fear clutching her.

"Well," he hemmed. It suddenly came to him. "Come on, you know she hates this life, right?"

As if realization had dawned on her, Kathy let out a shaky breath and nodded. "Right. True. I mean, John doesn't know a thing about this. I won't ask if during your lifetime John Winchester ever hunts a boogey," she said as if it was the biggest joke in the universe, "but I'm feeling better just imagining it." She reached out to him and held onto his arm. "Apparently Dave's mom broke their naming convention with him. I think he was supposed to be Gabriel? If she had her way he'd be David Campbell, the second. As it is, he's David Rossi, the first."

Dean thought the name over and though there was a hint of something familiar about it there was nothing he could point to. He didn't figure there would be either. How could he possibly tell Kathy that his mom was going to die in three years and he and Sam, his unborn brother, would never know this part of their family for three decades?

"Dave Rossi? Nope, sorry. But trust me, it doesn't mean anything. I'm sure he's fine."

She calmed herself and understood. Mary had wanted out and she had it. How she eventually changed her mind, Kathy didn't know, but just by Dean's being there, by the magic he held, she knew that Mary somehow eventually set her son on his path.

"Well, seeing that massive panic attack you'll want to tell me even less about what we're doing here." She said as they made their way back to the kitchen.

"I promise I'll tell you everything you need to know about now as soon as I figure it out."

"Comforting," she said with a shake of her head. "Well, it has to do with Harry, I know that. It has to. Why him? Why Harvey?"

She was right. What was it that Penelope had said? They'd only live at Oakview Estate Drive for a year before moving to San Francisco. That city was almost four hundred miles away. Harry and Kathy had roots here, they had kids here. Heck, Harry's brother lived just down the road. Why would they leave?

She watched him and read him. "What is it?"

"You guys plan on leaving the town anytime soon?"

"Valencia? No. L.A.'s a drive away and it's quiet here. It's the perfect location."

"Then this makes a lot less sense."

"What?"

"Penny ends up in San Francisco in a year. I know I'm going with her. I have no idea why we'd leave."

"Well, maybe the mission's done. Whatever it is, you finish and move on."

"If the mission is done, why do you stay?" He asked, that glint of knowing back in his eyes.

She was exasperated and just huffed at him, "Are you really back there again?"

"Just saying."

"I'm not tearing apart my family just because the job gets done."

"Then if the outcome doesn't matter—"

"Oh yeah, why don't I get down on one knee and propose? Does it ever occur to you that a man and a woman _can _be friends?"

"It occurs to me. _Philosophically_, I guess?"

"He was a stray now he's a friend."

"Mmhmm," he said knowingly.

She changed tack on him. "So, do I call you Granmamma or Baby Dean?"

His playful face went sober in a moment. "I'm sorry."

"Personally, I like Baby Dean."

"I'm apologizing here."

"Mmhmm," she mimicked.

"Daddy!" Penny ran in with a giant stuffed yellow bird in her hand. The toy was as big as she was. "Look what Jess gave me! It's a big birdie. His name is Big Birdie!"

Dean was _this _close to honestly giggling. "Baby girl," Dean said, using the nickname he'd heard Morgan call her. "His name is Big Bird."

She looked ecstatic. "Bird Bird!" She spun and ran back to the playroom.

"It's a crime she doesn't know Big Bird," Kathy said.

"We're not from around here, remember?"

"Where's her mom?"

With his reply, Kathy was sure her day could hold no more surprises.

He leaned against the back of his chair and extended his hand across the top of the table. Tapping the surface just a little, his heart beating a little faster than it should have, he said, "I am her mom."

Dean shook himself free of the memories of his first day and brought himself back to the present. Two weeks later he had settled into a decent rhythm in his new home. He missed Sam and Spencer, Lisa and Ben like _burning_ but there wasn't anything he could do about it. He was stuck in time. The only way forward was literally _forward_. Each day brought him closer and closer to that day in August when his whole life had changed. How strange was that? As many days as they'd spent traveling around the globe and throughout the past, only one day, just a morning and part of an afternoon, had gone by.

Harold and Katherine were workaholics. Dean drove them into the city at the crack of dawn to avoid the freeway traffic and took them back home well after sunset. He would also take Jessica and Harvey to school which was a private Latin school just outside the city. Penny followed them and when everyone was delivered, Dean and Penny would spend the day at the park or in the library and hop scotch to any little shop for lunchtime. After school, Dean would take all three kids out. Harvey loved baseball and being as Dean sucked at anything above T-ball, Harve and Jess generally threw the ball around. What could he say? To a hunter, there was only one purpose for a baseball bat and it was generally the same way the mafia used them. Penny preferred tea parties.

Marc was a bachelor around town so he was alone in that large house of his. Pretty much a big kid himself, on Friday afternoons he would come down to the city and take the kids to the movies for whatever was rated G and new. As Dean wasn't in the humor to let Penny out of his sight, he never let on that he followed them each and every Friday.

A maid came in three times a week to settle the house and that was the limit of the foot traffic. Saturday, everyone would sleep in to recover from the week. Two weeks that summer were spent on a Grand Canyon road trip.

Theirs was an odd little family made up of curious parts but it was almost as complete as Dean had ever known. Everything was a new kind of normal and he liked it. He _liked _it. He didn't want the dynamic to change. As the weeks turned into months, as the calendar ticked over into the new year, Dean uncomfortably knew whatever it was that they had there wasn't going to last.

* * *

Marcus Specter looked over his financial statement for the first quarter of 1981. He rolled his neck, easing out a crick before looking to market estimates and his trade papers.

"Shit," he said, combing his fingers through his short brown hair. "Shit shit _fuck_." There was no denying it. They were in a recession. A deep one. The entire market was contracting and he was leveraged beyond recovery. The financing arm of his company, Specter Savings and Loan, was extended too far to sustain the pressure. _Oh God_. Harry had trusted him and Marcus had invested his brother heavily into the company and now . . .

He'd ruined his family and now he was sure he'd be going to prison.

"Oh, God."

* * *

The Polaroid was recent if not flattering. The soil came from Eternal Valley Memorial Park. He didn't want to remember how he'd managed to get the bone of the neighborhood black cat but he shivered every time he thought about it. A sprig of dry yarrow was laid on top of it all. Marcus closed the tin cigar box and looked up and down the desolate stretch of road. It was supposed to be a new development but he ran out of operation money to keep the work going. Hollow homes stared back towards him and the street that was supposed to be paved was a lonesome dirt crossroads.

A friend of a friend of an acquaintance stopped him from swallowing a bullet with a wild story. It was something a man about to kill himself would consider remotely possible.

He looked to the small hole he'd already dug and bent down, placing the box in and covering it. Just as he stood he heard her voice dance to him.

"So, Marc," she said. He turned to her. She was beautiful. She wore a form fitting black dress and black heels. Her skin was luminescent and her hair was long and dark. Her eyes . . . they were fire red. He jumped back at the sight and she laughed. "Don't be scared. Did you expect the Easter Bunny?"

"Sorry," he said but he couldn't believe he actually said it. He'd just apologized to a demon.

"What do you have to offer me?"

He was confused. "What? I thought . . . I thought, you'd get my soul and I—"

She laughed. "Oh, you're adorable. _Really_. What makes you think I want your soul?"

"Isn't that—"

"What I _do_? Darling, I'm in _acquisitions_. You're about to blow a hole in the back of your head and because of a chickenshit reason to boot, so no, I do not want your soul. Heck, when you die we might just get it anyway, so . . ." She shrugged.

He took a deep breath and nodded. "This is all true. But then, if I didn't have something you did want, you wouldn't be here."

She scrunched up her nose and gave him a little applause. "Nice. Okay. Here's the deal. You sign over your debt to me, and you manage to avoid prison."

"What would a demon want . . ." He shook his head. "No. No, I can't—"

"Do you know what prison is like, Marcus? It isn't pleasant. We've made sure of that."

"You don't understand. Most of my debt is collateral in my brother's company. I can't sign it over to you—"

"Yes you can. Because you _embezzled _it. Either I or the bank or the Feds get it. You are up the creek." She looked left and right. "No paddle."

"Why do you want my debt?"

She walked past him and outstretched her arms in the full moon light. "Because I have plans for this little slice of country living. And a tech company might just come in handy one day. Did you know that the government has developed war games? People actually playing virtual war on a computer. Imagine that in every home. The possibilities are amazing. An entire generation acclimatized to violence."

"If this is your sales pitch—" He turned to leave.

"I could tell you I'm going to use your land to set up an underage brothel and you'll still do it. You know why?" She asked. He didn't move. "This bitter little pill tastes better than a 9mm and _much _better than your future cellmate's hairy balls." The horror hit him like a crushing wave. His reality was that. His future was set. There was a Heaven, there was a Hell. All of that was true and he had a choice.

Demurely, she folded her hands before her and asked, "So, do we have a deal?"

* * *

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	23. Quantum Leap of Faith

**Chapter Twenty Three**

**Quantum Leap of Faith**

_Valencia, California, 1981_

"Daddy?"

"Yep?" He asked, his head under the hood of the Benz.

"You think I'm pretty?"

With a little trepidation, Dean turned to his four year old who was dressed up in one of Kathy's vintage Chanel suits and heels as she wore a full face of make-up. A year's worth of YouTube videos on how to raise confident women were supposed to help him formulate a thoughtful answer to what was called '_the inevitable question_.' He tried to think of something meaningful but she was just too damn adorable.

"Um . . ." He was sure he looked like road kill two seconds before it became road kill.

Penny twirled a little. She idolized Kathy and thought she was the most beautiful lady next to her mommy and she wanted to be just like her one day.

". . . um, oh!" he clapped. Clearing his throat he said, "Baby Girl, 'pretty' is for flowers. You are . . . _fabulous_."

She looked shocked for a moment. Then she thought it over. She whispered, "Fabulous?" as if it were a revelation. Truth be told, being four she only really comprehended the outline of the word but what she did know was '_fabulous'_ was a million times better than '_pretty_.'

"The _princess_ of fabulous," he confirmed.

"Penelope Garcia, princess of fabulous!" She jumped, her arms thrown up in the air. She spun and then ran a bit wobbly back into the house.

"She's really good in those heels," he said to himself. Turning back to the car he resumed his inspection. April was nearing the end and May would be returning. The jacarandas were almost in bloom again. Life was good for those two displaced time travelers in that secluded bit of suburbia.

"Dean?" Harvey called out to him from the house. Nine years old and half an inch taller, Harvey Specter looked a lot like his dad, or at least how Dean imagined Harold at that age. The only real differences were that his hair was not quite as light as Harry's and instead of blue he had dark brown eyes. He was a smart kid and he knew it but whatever ego he had was checked by his shyness. He may always have the right answer but he seldom opened his mouth to express it. He reminded Dean of Spencer in many ways.

"Yeah, little man?"

Going out to the garage and sidling up alongside Dean, Harvey peeked into the engine. "I like cars." It was a quietly said declaration. Harvey never made declarative statements. He generally spoke in questions as a way of never offending anyone.

Dean looked down to the kid and said, "I know."

"I like _this_ car."

"Harve, what's up?" Dean knew the kid pretty well and he knew something was on his mind.

"If dad sells it, will you stay?" Dean noticed he also had a Spencer-like habit to start conversations halfway through an inner monologue.

"There're three cars in here, Harve—"

"I mean, he'd have to sell all of them though, right?"

Dean was absolutely confused. He stepped back from the car and closed the hood. He turned to him and asked, "What's going on?"

"Dad and Uncle Marc are always at each other. He tries to hide it but I can hear him on the phone through my wall. I picked up the kitchen phone last night and it was really bad. You won't stay if we don't have money but the only things we can sell are the cars, so you wouldn't stay any way, right?"

Money. Dean had noticed the sudden deterioration of Harry and Marc's relationship but Dean had no idea what the cause was. He and Kathy could only speculate but Harry kept himself to himself much more lately. He barely came down for dinner and was always taking calls.

"I'm not going anywhere," Dean assured him.

Harvey looked like he desperately wanted to believe him. When it came to Harry, whatever free time he had was often spent writing code and testing. His weekdays had been filled with work and his weekends were pre-occupied with it as well. Dean recognized the source of that _thing_. He'd seen it before and was very familiar with it. When he brought it up to Kathy one day she confirmed it.

"He doesn't really stop thinking about Beth," Kathy said of Harry's wife. "When she died so suddenly and he had Harvey to think about, a part of him shut down. His whole life he was always about doing what he wanted and running away to Chicago at sixteen to be a musician was one of those things. When she died he changed his entire life. He said he had to get more _responsible_ but in a sense he's still running away."

Dean had seen the same thing in his dad. The death of someone so deeply loved changes people. It can make them emotionally distant from the people they should hang onto. That was Harry and Harvey's relationship. In the last year, after the arms length his father had kept him at all his life, Harvey clung to Dean the same way the young Winchesters had clung to Bobby and Pastor Jim, the more emotionally available men in their lives. It was the same way Spencer had clung to his Doc Shurley.

"You want me to talk to him?" Dean asked Harvey.

"Don't tell him I said anything?" The kid asked with pleading desperation.

"Do I look like a narc?" Dean asked. After a year of co-habitation, Harvey had picked up on most of Dean's slang, like a foreign language. He shook his head, managing to crack a smile. Dean shooed him back into the house, reminding him of the homework he had to do and he reluctantly complied. Wiping the grease from his hands, Dean ran through several ice-breakers in his mind that might work on Harry but he wasn't sure he could step into the bear trap of fighting brothers. Money, the root of most human evil. Two too many qualifiers there, _whatever_.

"Guess what?" Kathy said, walking quickly down the drive. She looked ecstatic. In her hands was the mail and one of the letters was already opened.

"The Soviet Union fell?" He asked, teasing.

"Come on, at least guess something plausible."

"I give up."

"Annie's having a baby! She's due in October!" With the next words she walked closer and dropped her volume. "You're gonna have a little cousin!" She was beside herself. He had to gauge his reaction carefully. Too much excitement would make her wonder if he ever knew the baby. That would trigger a flash of horror. Not enough excitement and she'd read too much into their relationship.

"Spoilers?" He asked. It was a little something he'd picked up from Spencer's show. On the tablet, Dean had caught up on decades of time-traveling BBC television. River Song was his idol, _hell_, he wanted to _be_ River Song in his next life and he didn't care what anyone said about it.

"Just for baby shower gifts," she confessed.

"Boy, healthy, smart."

"ABC blocks smart?"

"Encyclopedia Britannica smart."

Kathy whistled.

"Yeah."

It was weird for him to think that the day he last saw Spencer was also the day the previous incarnation of him was actually pregnant with Spencer.

"The shower will probably be in September. I'll call Mimi to get the date, I know she'll throw it, and I'll call the travel agent for our tickets—"

"Our? I can't go—"

"You don't look a thing like yourself if you get my meaning. No one will recognize or remember your face. You'll just be a guy they met once at a party," she wheedled. "You know you're curious how everyone was when you were a baby."

Everything she said was true but still he hesitated. How weird would it be to go to a Campbell/le Blanc fête for his unborn cousin with his entire extended family in attendance? His mom and dad, aunt and uncle, however many other cousins he'd never met or even knew existed. The _actual_ baby Dean would be there. He'd be just a face in the crowd, a fly on the wall.

"You know I hate planes," he weakly offered as a buffer against his temptation.

"You know which flights are safe," she said. He hadn't bothered to be subtle about it when he'd refused to drive into the city on the two days there would be larger earthquakes in the area the year before. Harry was sure Dean was psychic and Jess and Harve loved having the days off from school. Only Kathy suspected that his intuition stemmed from foreknowledge. She didn't know about the iPad but she knew he was from the future, additionally, she also knew he was tapped into the earth itself. Either one of those were excuse enough for how he knew when the tremblers were to hit.

She stripped away his last defense and the truth was he was curious. He wanted to see his mom and dad in an environment where demons weren't likely, especially given the expectedly large numbers of hunters and witches to be in attendance. "Okay. If it even happens, like you said, it's probably five months away anyway so I'm not gonna stress it. Right?" He asked, clearly stressing it. She smiled but didn't say anything. "Thanks."

"Glad to be mischievous." She almost turned to go inside when she looked like she remembered something. "The reunion—"

"Please don't say family—"

"Stanford. My tenth. It's in October. I wanted the kids to go up for the weekend too. Can you squeeze one more plane ride into the year? Well, technically two, round trip."

"By October I can drive over, remember?"

How could she forget? The knowledge sometimes came to her at uncomfortable moments, like when the kids begged for Dean to take them into town on the weekends or when he and Harry were having long conversations about the future of the joystick controller. Sometimes she needed to strip the rust off of her magic and just sit out under the stars talking about waxing or waning moons and how to best use herbs for repellants against the dead, either as ghosts or demons, and she would see her Granmamma speaking right through Dean. He and Penny were already a part of her family but now they were a part of _this_ family. Something was coming to separate them and she was already harboring a deep resentment for whatever that thing was.

"Right," she said. Dean had already told her that the future was something you tried not to change, especially if you already knew it ends up at fifty one percent or better in the positive direction. His future, he explained, didn't really do statistical wonders for the equation but Penny's future did. If she said they stayed one year, one year is all that they had. "I need to stop making plans," she said with a laugh.

"Don't ever stop making plans," he said. It wasn't meant to be a serious life lesson but it came out that way. It effectively put a kibosh on the mood. With a nod, Kathy was about to leave when Dean stopped her, "Harvey's worried about Harry and Marc."

"He said that?"

"Yeah. It's not like he couldn't tell something was going on." He watched her as he said it. Kathy was the closest person to Harry and she understood his and Marc's relationship better than anyone. He read her as concerned, worried even, but he could tell she was at a loss for an explanation.

"I already asked him. All he'll tell me is Marc did something _really_ bad but he didn't want him to go to jail for it."

"Wow." That made everything that happened in the last month settle into the starkest terms. Dean had assumed something pretty bad happened but his base of understanding sibling mischief extended to running away from home and shacking up with a demon. Jail wasn't ever part of the equation, and yes he could see how messed up that was. "How bad are we talking? Jay walking, car jacking, or bringing a gun to a knife fight?"

"Fraud. I think Marc stole money from the company. Harry won't tell me too much since one of the partners at my firm is the company's general counsel."

"The kid overheard Harry say something about not having any money. Harve asked me if I'd leave if Harry had to sell the cars."

That couldn't be right. Kathy wasn't sure she was hearing that right. "I'll talk to him," she said. She went into the house looking ready to put a hole in something. A minute later, Jessica came out with her school books in her hands. She looked like she'd seen a terracotta warrior come to life.

"I think mama's mad," she said over to Dean.

He nodded. "Batten down the hatches."

She looked around. Moving over to the spiral staircase, Jess sat down with her books in her lap. Reaching eleven, Jess grew more and more into her resemblance of Marie every passing day. Dean had looked through the contents of the tablet to understand the phenomena but the closest he came to comprehension was a stub in Wikipedia of all places about the existence of a person or thing called a doppelgänger. Dean wasn't sure Jess could be called Marie's true doppelganger since she didn't have his eyes but he wondered if a doppelgänger could even have his eyes since they belonged to his soul and not particularly to his DNA.

"Do you know what's going on?" She asked him after a while of trying to get back to her homework on that Saturday afternoon. "Everybody's acting weird." Just as she said it she smiled and then amended, "Okay, not you or Penny, I guess."

Closing up the car doors and wiping off his hands, Dean said, "I don't think we count, Mini-Me." It was his nickname for her. She had requested one when she heard him call Penny 'Baby Girl.' She'd never had a nickname before, she explained, and the girls in the books she read all had nicknames. Her personal favorite was 'Carrots.' When he evaluated just how exactly she looked like a younger Marie, the new name was created and stuck, though his false explanation of its source and reference point didn't help her understand it. Jess wasn't in on the knowledge that her baby cousin Dean was also the man who served as chauffeur and babysitter for the last year. He also kept it hidden from Kathy that Jess was the near exact double of the origin of their family line. And then of course, _Austin Powers_.

"But you do," she said with the kind of insistence only present in an eleven year old. "Penny's like having a doll and almost everybody in class talks about their little sisters like they're mutants so it's nice . . . I don't know," she said, at a loss.

"Not having a mutant?" Dean asked.

With a laugh she said, "Yeah." She thought a little to herself and the said, "And you're my Mary."

Now Dean was at a loss.

"Poppins," she added. He wasn't sure what to say to that. Of all the things Dean Winchester/Campbell/Garcia had ever been called in all his lives, Mary Poppins didn't come close. He hoped that wasn't his new nickname. "Harvey thinks so too," she said. How much did he wish Jessica and Harvey had considered him their Alfred Pennyworth instead, he couldn't say since as he thought on it, he didn't actually find anything really wrong with the Mary comparison. Maybe he even appreciated it. They had watched it enough on TV (post homework and studying) and he saw how the kids idolized her to know that in their minds they felt that Mary Poppins was cool people. "Is it weird?" She asked, seeing his hesitation.

"Nah, I like it."

"You think it's weird," she said, looking a little dejected. Dean went over to her and sat on the curving staircase a few steps below her so he was just under eye level with her.

"Let's be real?" He said, setting it up for her as he extended his pinky to her.

"The realest," she said, interlocking her pinky with his.

He whispered, "Mary Poppins rules."

She laughed. Penny came back out of the house and ran over to them in a new face of make up and another outfit that didn't fit.

"Lookie!" She commanded with a decidedly regal air. "I am fabulous!"

Dean addressed his next words to Jess. "Kathy's gonna kill me if her closet is a tornado, isn't she."

"Oh, it's _gonna_ be a tornado."

"Yep." Smiling to Penny he said, "Yes you are." He extended his hand to her. "Let's go clean up."

* * *

She had to sit down and the bed was closest. Harry leaned against the window frame and looked like a weight had been lifted from him. He'd been carrying the news for a month and keeping it from Kathy had felt like a betrayal. As much as he'd wanted to protect his brother he wanted to lie to her even less. Kathy knew that about Harry. She knew the limits of her relationship with him and his limits with Marc. The only hesitation wasn't his heart so much as his logic. As long as her firm was aligned to the company, Marc was in danger from a revelation.

That's why she walked into his room just moments before holding a standard retainer agreement. It wouldn't be a conflict of interest for her to be his personal counsel and so she handed it to him with a pen and his checkbook, a check in the amount if a dollar already filled in waiting for his signature. He signed both documents, handed them to her and knew what he was about to say was protected by privilege.

"Marc used SpecterSoft as collateral for his development. Everything fell through and he sold the debt to a third party. I've been removed by a vote of no confidence and for the last month I've been part of the handover team, finishing up the projects I was working on. I have two weeks left to get a severance package from the company I started."

"How did he—" were the only words she could get out.

"The S&L held a thirty percent stake—"

"That was your dad's holdings for Harvey's trust—"

"Marc used his power as executor to move it. Then he already had his fifteen and all he needed was six from me. _Six_. Can you believe it? I never would have given it to him if I knew he'd bundle all of it. Last year I found out he was using his fifteen and I warned him, I _warned_ him that he was playing with my life. Twenty one percent is what I thought, you know? Twenty one in the hands of some bank if he lost everything? A vote on the board given to—he _promised_ me. He looked me right in the eye and promised me. He looked me in the eye then turned around and—" he couldn't finish.

"Harry—"

"When the board found out someone else owned the keys to the building they told me I was out either way. The rest of what I own they're buying back."

"Marc can't touch Harvey's trust fund—"

"If I fight him on that and I win—"

She closed her eyes. "He goes to prison for fraud." She reached out to him and he practically collapsed next to her. "So all those late night calls were?"

"Francis," the general counsel, "my non-compete leaves me with not a lot of options. L.A.'s dead for me. Games are dead for me. I can't work here, doing what I do, for four years."

Four years. A severance package wouldn't cover four years on Oakview. She now understood his fear of not having any money.

"Why didn't you tell me?" She asked, wrapping an arm around him. Kathy, like her ancestor Kitty, was very direct with her emotions. She hated affectation and pretense. Harry admired that in her.

"I had to look first. What could I have said that would make this even rational?" He wondered almost to himself. "I can't . . . I couldn't ask you to change your life, not again. But—but I can't stand the idea of losing what we've got."

"Harold Specter, you unmitigated ass. I'm not splitting up our family to keep this house. And the benefit for me of having a career backed up by a pretty decent education is _mobility_."

"You don't mind?" He asked, his voice tinged with desperate hope. "We'd be uprooting everything."

"You're lucky I'm not senior partner yet, that's all. Well, and I'll kill Marc when I see him. The kids loved their school and their friends." She gave his shoulder a quick rub knowing nothing could take away the pain of losing his company. He'd built it out of their first apartment in Chicago's South Side. Everything about the apartment shared between he and Beth brought too many memories and it was too small to accommodate the new additions of Kathy and Jess and baby Harvey. His first program was a music relay that used a QWERTY keyboard as a piano keyboard. Music synthesis emerged but it had no audience in the Jazz clubs he frequented. Beats were what he worked on and the neighborhood kids would shout their admiration of his compositions from below their window. He sent a tape to a company in the valley and got his first job as a sound engineer for arcade games. The entire family moved across America for that. Eight years later SpecterSoft was the leading sound effects contractor for the industry. Now it was gone, for him at least.

"Any biters on the bait?" She asked.

"Interviews? This is what I wanted to avoid."

"With me? Why?"

"None of them are anywhere near."

"You already said the city was slim pickings, Harry. We're talking about moving and taking the kids out of school. I assumed that."

"We're talking almost four hundred miles."

That sent a small jolt through her but she wasn't sure if it was the shock from the distance or the shock from the familiarity.

"They're calling it _Silicon Valley_. A laugh, right? It's in the Bay area."

"San Francisco Bay?"

"Yeah." He said. Kathy nodded, acknowledging what she already knew as the truth was in fact the truth. It was a human reaction. Denial, protection. "I have a couple of offers. They want me up there to check the offices out, see how I like what they have going on. I can try and hold out, see if something closer comes along."

Another human reaction was faith. Katherine Pearson had faith in many things and one was the force of nature repairing the cars and looking after the kids downstairs.

"No. Don't hold out. San Francisco sounds nice."

There was a mix of conflicting emotions on his face. Primarily he seemed glad, satisfied, relieved. Under it was a reservation and lingering doubt knotted right over his eyes.

"What?" She asked.

"Dean. Penny. I can't just ask this, can I? I mean to relocate? Shouldn't I though? The kids love him, they love her. What if he says no? What if he says yes just to be, you know . . . _Dean_. I don't want to be accommodated and screw up the whole dynamic—"

"You're thinking too hard about this. They aren't gonna leave us," she said with absolute certainty. That thing she'd feared since the day Dean and Penny finally settled in and became real parts of their unit suddenly lifted from her like a pressure rising from her chest.

"How can you be—" they heard the sounds of laughing ringing through the house. Kathy gave Harry a knowing look. They followed the sounds out of his bedroom and down the hall. Standing on the bridged overpass that spanned the two wings of the house and was suspended over the great room, they watched as Dean, Jess, Harve, and Penny played Red Light, Green Light. Jess was the light and to even the playing field, Dean was on his knees to counterbalance the length of his strides.

"Not fair!" Penny cried with a squeal of breathless delight as she was sent out. "That was yellow."

"There's no yellow," Harvey said.

"Then how do you know to go fast?" Penny asked as a legitimate question.

"Penny, yellow means slow down," Dean said.

Jess started cracking up. "Not the way Uncle Marc drives." Harvey started laughing at that too. Penny started just because.

"The three of you are never going anywhere with him again," Dean said, shaking his head.

"Can we go to the park?" Jess implored. She ran up to Dean and circled her arms around his shoulders from behind and swayed side to side.

He folded his arms in front and put on a stern face. "Homework status?"

She jumped up and said, "Three-quarters complete, sir!"

Harvey sprang to his feet and saluted, "Only my Latin verbs left, sir!" As an aside, Harvey confessed to him, "I need a little help." If that had been said to Dean the year before he wouldn't have been much of a source of aid but when he realized the kids went to a Latin school and he personally would have about thirty years before he was back in his own time, and add to that the fact that Latin was the language of hunting, a language he had a hate-hate relationship with, he took the iPad and started teaching himself the language. It helped that the tablet transcended time and he found a program from a possible future of 2096 that established the best way to teach a language to adult learners. He had already smoothed out any gaps in his Spanish (Mexican dialect via Veracruz), discovered modern French, overhauled his previously ancient Hindi, and reacquainted himself with the dreaded Latin. He even tested out what Chuck had said about it being able to download _anything_ and was shocked to see 'Angelic Tongues' as an option to learn. He was almost tempted to make that a joke. That, Enochian, Gaelic, Mandarin, and Japanese were on his to-do, just because.

To Jess in Latin Dean asked, "Should we help him?"

"If he is good and has eaten all of his vegetables," Jess carefully declared, also in Latin.

"What say you Harvey Specter? Are your vegetables eaten?"

Thinking very hard, Harvey translated what was said and then nodded saying, "Only if you don't look for the Brussels sprouts, sir." _Brussels sprouts_ were said in English.

Dean couldn't hold onto his stern expression after that response. With a chuckle he said in plain English, "Okay, get in the car." The three of them cheered and bolted for the garage to the recreational vehicle, a black 69 Dodge Charger. Harry wasn't one for Studebakers.

"No running—" he called out but they were gone. Dean looked to Kathy and Harry up on the walkway. "Back before dinner, okay?"

Harry hadn't realized Dean knew they had been watching them. Kathy gave the okay. A moment later he was gone.

Kathy looked to Harry. "Everything's going to be fine," she reassured him. "He'll come."

Harry glanced to her and shook his head, smiling. She always knew. Somehow she always knew.

"Was that Latin?" He asked with a quizzical look.

"They go to a Latin school, Harry. They learn it."

"I mean Dean. Is Spanish really that close to it?"

She shrugged feigning ignorance. Every hunter and witch worth their salt knew Latin but she couldn't tell him that. She couldn't tell him it was one of the reasons she'd sent the kids to a Latin school in the first place. "He helps them with their homework. It's got to supplement, right? Rub off."

He accepted that and let it go saying, "True."

With all his burdens lifted Harry felt like a man reborn. He finally faced the unknown without horror and trepidation for the first time in weeks. For a man who had lost all that was dear to him on a single wintry night nine years prior, he gained so much at the same time. If he had ever forgotten to say how grateful he was, he hoped whatever was out there listening could hear him now.

* * *

"But, you can't leave," Marc said over the phone. He seemed surprised.

"How do you expect me to stay? You took everything," Harry said, reigning in his anger. He remembered that he and his family were up for a new beginning so that checked his rage. On the other end Marc was silent as if he'd never thought about the consequences of his actions beyond himself. "You know, it was one thing when Dad said I'd never do anything with my life and then he turned around, once I proved him wrong, to actually support me. It didn't erase the old shit but it was more than I ever expected. We parted on good terms. It's something else completely when someone who's always been there for me turns around and claws all of that support back. In all of this, I don't really care what you did to me; I'll be fine because unlike you little brother, I actually make things with my hands. But you really take the cake when you destroy not only the trust dad put in my company but the trust he put in you to make sure Harvey had something for himself one day. I can rebuild that for him but just understand what you did."

"I'm sorry—"

"I don't need to keep hearing you say that. I'm only telling you since we need the house on the market, okay?"

"Okay," he said in a shaking whisper. Hanging up the phone, Marc Specter understood why the demon didn't want his soul. At that moment he was sure it was completely worthless. Three hundred and fifty miles. They were leaving and not looking back and it was his fault. They were his only family and they were going, likely forever.

"Back again?" A new face asked him, just as lovely with the same blood red eyes. "How many black cats do you have in your neighborhood?" She asked with a wicked grin.

Marcus Specter stood at the crossroads once more under the full moon, only now the houses were further along in their development, construction having been restored.

"Same cat. Dug it up."

"Thrifty," she said as if it were a compliment. She looked around the development. "Should we christen it 'Diablo Falls' or how about 'Deadwood?' Something catchy. 'Dante's Bluff?' I don't know, anything to offset the insipid '_Los Angeles_.'"

"I want to take it back, all of it."

"Prison then? A new kink?"

"I can't do this to Harry."

"It's already done. Boo hoo."

"I can confess to tampering with Harvey's trust."

She turned to him, slowly, deliberately, like a serpent sizing up how long it would take to digest the fat rat in front of her.

"Do you know what a covenant is, Marcus?"

". . . A what?"

She shrugged and walked across his path. "A _covenant_. It's a promise, a contract. Legally binding and enforceable. I kissed you, you kissed me, money exchanged hands, bulldozers roared back to life. A covenant can't be broken without the approval of," she held up two fingers, "both parties."

"Or? The deal wasn't for my soul. So what? I go to prison? Yeah, I know, that's the point."

"It doesn't matter darling. I'm a spirit creature. This," she gestured to the girl she was wearing, "is window dressing. Your soul signed this agreement. Do you know what I could do to you just for saying you'd break our contract?" Before he could reply, Marcus started to cough. It started off soft at first, like he had a dry tickle at the back of his throat and just needed some water to settle it. Soon they became hard and ragged that left him gasping for breath.

"That's your soul tearing itself out of you. Unpleasant, right?" She released him and he fell to the ground choking for air. She went over to him and bent down to say, "Breath is the conduit of souls. A kiss is how we bind them. When you break a soul-to-soul promise you forfeit yourself. The moment you do _anything_ to legitimately endanger this contract I'll rip your soul out of you one of two ways: you'll choke on it or my hounds will tear it from your chest. Understand?"

He nodded.

"Have a goodnight, Marc." She vanished.

* * *

Most of the larger things were going to be sold. Other things that couldn't fit in suitcases were going into boxes to be sent via post. The kids tried not to mind, or at least show that they minded. The prospect of moving, not so much the loss of things, was what really got them. They were upset to leave their friends and the idea of living somewhere new was only a feeble balm for broken hearts. The only form of adventure came from the knowledge that the first few nights there they would camp out in the family room until they got a chance to pick out the new furniture for their bedrooms. Harry had offered to outfit the new house with furnishings but the kids insisted that if they had to live there then they would like some say in how it looked.

When Harry had told Dean about the new living scheme, Dean didn't seem surprised at all which only convinced Harry a little more that his driver/au pair was psychic. After predicting two earthquakes, the inkling existed but not even batting an eyelash at an epic move was another.

"Nothing really bothers you, does it Dean?" Harry asked, seated across from him at the dinner table.

"Not the small stuff," he'd replied. That made Harry laugh at himself a little and he nodded. "Got a job set up?" Dean asked.

"Offers. I'm flying up next week to see where I'd fit. My contract with the old place is specific so I have to see how best to be utilized."

"So no sound and no games?"

"No sound _and_ games, which is what I do. Ridiculous, right? How can you have sound and computers but not have a gaming structure? No consoles?"

Dean didn't entertain the idea of WoW or YouTube or digital radio or text to voice, or freaking _Siri_. He just didn't. After a year of living in an age before dial up was even a fume in someone's mind and where he had to carry a fistful of change everywhere just to make a call, he had successfully repressed all longing for the digital age. Repressed, not forgot. He still had access through his Magic School Bus a.k.a. tablet.

"Well, where are you thinking about?" He asked, pretty sure he could remain neutral enough not to alter the future for Harry, whatever it was.

"Oh! Well, three places really," he said, never expecting to have this conversation with Dean. For some odd reason, every time Harry had brought up his job or just basic technology, Dean would blank out. He would discuss the merits of certain things within technology but nothing on a broad, theoretical basis. Harry had assumed Dean had an antiquated outlook on technological advancement. He had seen the attitude in his own father but not in someone as young as Dean was. Harry assumed it must have been a cultural difference. At the moment he was sure Dean was aiming for polite small talk. "These aren't exactly household names like IBM—"

"It's okay."

"Well, there's a new company called AutoDesk but they're not really focused on sound but the programming experience I have will work since they're heavy on 3D rendering." Dean filed that away as AutoCAD. "MIC is another one. They're coming out with a new division in March called Symantec. From the name you can guess it's working on language processing so I can work from that angle." Hmm, not bad, Dean thought.

"Finally, and this isn't really my top pick since I can't see how I'd fit in the business model but I told him I'd look around and he's dedicated, young but dedicated that's for sure. They think they can do something with the personal computer outside of IBM. He's daring, I'll give him that. Apple. Not as in pie. Just Apple. Weird, right? Like a rock band or something."

_Haha_. And he thought he'd be able to retain his neutrality. Haa. Dean breathed, in and out. He calmed the baby wail rising in his throat. Very evenly, scaring even himself with how mellow he sounded he said to Harry, "Forget the other meetings, take that one. Call him, say yes, oh my God, yes."

"Wha—"

Dean realized, with some relief, he had just fully and unconsciously slipped into speaking Spanish.

"Apple sounds good," he said, reverting to English. "_Aspirational_," he added. "Yeah," he got up before he was tempted to start jumping up and down. He kept his cool saying, "I mean, check it out first but I like the sound of that one." He beat a hasty retreat to his apartment. Harry looked after him a little thrown off, a little confused, but feeling oddly satisfied holding Dean Garcia's awkward imprimatur of Apple Inc.

* * *

"Gonna miss it?" Kathy asked Harvey the day before the move as she helped him finish up his packing. He'd always loved his room, it had a baseball theme he'd installed since he was five when they'd all gone to a game together. Kathy already knew the answer to the question she asked but also knew it was important for kids to feel like they could voice their opinions or frustrations regarding decisions they had no control over.

He just nodded. It was clear he couldn't do more without crying.

"Oh, baby," she said. She went to him and wrapped her arms around him. He clung to her and he held her tight. At nine there wasn't a lot of perspective to be had regarding a change in location. His dad would experience a cut in pay but it wasn't going to make their lives any different in terms of comforts. He'd still have his own room, he'd have most of his own things and whatever was different would be new. Harvey couldn't mesh those realities with his acute feeling of loss and so he mourned for that which was perfectly apparent: he was leaving his friends and he doubted he'd make new ones, he was losing his home and doubted the security of the new one, and most of all he was losing his uncle and the only thing he knew for sure was that Uncle Marc did a bad thing that caused all of this pain to begin with.

There had only been a few people he had been really close to and the emotional distance of his father was offset with Kathy from the day he was born and then Marc from the day they moved to California when he was little. It almost seemed to him that there was a ration for love in his life. The mother he never knew, the mother his dad couldn't talk about or even look at pictures of without pain was a phantom to Harvey. He knew her name and he had a few ghostly pictures of her but nothing else. No stories. No anecdotes. Nothing. When she was taken from him, the balance was immediately restored with the woman who raised him. He had grown up associating her name with the word 'mother' and only hadn't called her that because Kathy was uncomfortable with the idea of supplanting any woman the title belonged to. She didn't feel it was her place as her position in their family hadn't been an accident of fate, as Harry had thought it had been, but a strange design she herself didn't quite understand. Despite Kathy's hesitations, hesitations Harvey thankfully never fully grasped else he would have existed under the shadow of thinking both his parents didn't care as much for him as they could have, he freely called Jessica his _sister_ and she freely called him her _brother_.

Almost as soon as Marc entered their lives, so too did Grandpa. A year later grandpa was gone. The balance was maintained.

Burt, their previous driver, was just that. He was Mr. A to B and there was no latitude for more. When Burt planned to retire, in his child's mind, Harvey wondered who it was Burt would be replaced with. The day Burt left they welcomed Dean and Penny into their lives. They rounded out their family so much. Where his dad and Kathy were working more and more as he and Jess got older, and where Uncle Marc seemed to be lost in his own business most of the time, Dean was like having a grown up who was a big brother too. Harvey liked having someone younger than he was in the house and it helped that Penny liked being the baby. Harvey had been so happy with everything that he lost sight of the balance. A Burt didn't equal a Dean and a Penny. Everything would turn again. He would lose someone and when he heard his dad's increasing arguments and the subjects of those arguments he knew who and what was being taken away.

From a very young age Harvey Specter was made cynical to the perceived fact that all love was counterbalanced with some loss. As he gained one person into his world another would drop away. It was hard for him not to speculate when, not if, it would happen again and to wonder just how many times in his life it would happen.

"I don't want to lose you, Kathy," he said with almost fevered intensity.

She wasn't sure where that came from but she knew she had to do everything to assure him, "That is not going to happen."

* * *

"Dean?" Jess said as she packed up her room. Jessica was very particular about how things should be so Dean operated as an extension of her. They'd entered a symbiosis in movement where it came to the point that Jess didn't have to say a word as Dean followed and acted on each one of her thoughts, almost before she was sure she was thinking them. She didn't know if it came to the point where he was anticipating her or she was directing him. Penny was in the hallway across from the open door completely preoccupied with a coloring book. Her dancing frogs were orange dotted red and her singing trees were pink striped yellow with blue leaves. Penelope Maria Garcia loved color.

"Yep?" He asked.

"Did you know mama before?" It was a question she'd wanted to ask for a while. The move made it feel like she could ask almost anything and leave whatever could become unpleasant behind.

"Yeah, other summers—" he said as a reflexive automatic response.

"Ms. Granger was an evil old lady who didn't like anybody. She really didn't like nice people. She _especially_ didn't like, well, anybody named 'Garcia' if you get my drift."

The jig was up. "Whoa. That bad?"

"The only thing more hateful than she was is her old hissy black cat Hercules," she said. "She would have _hated_ you."

"Thanks?"

"Take it. It's a compliment."

"'Kay."

"So . . . really, my mama?"

"Why?"

"Cause you're super besties," a phrase she'd learned from Dean, "and mama doesn't make friends like that. Especially guys."

At that he wanted to spit out a very paternalistic, 'what do you know about guys?' but refrained. Instead he asked, "And you think . . . Me and Kathy?"

She pondered that. Was that what she was asking? She guessed that's what it seemed like but that wasn't what she meant. "No, I don't. Mama's friends with Harry and it's different with them. I guess I always saw them together like _that_, even though they weren't. I don't know if I'm saying it right. If Harry and mama started dating like with _kissing_ I'd be like, _finally!_ you know?" He could grasp that. There was definite potential there even though it wasn't really something either looked for. "You're different. You and mama, it's like me and Harvey, get it?"

"Got it."

"So, did you?"

"No," which was the truth. To defer any further suspicion, Dean added, "Your mom is easy to get along with."

"I guess," she said with a shrug. She looked around her room. It was so bare. Certain feelings she couldn't really control came to the surface and she blurted out, "Uncle Marc's a scoundrel, isn't he Dean?"

"Come on, Jess—"

"Be straight with me," she said using another phrase she learned from him.

He had to formulate some kind of adult example. "I told you about my brother, Sam," he said. She nodded. "Sam wouldn't win any awards for decision maker of the year, but I wouldn't either. The same way I can point at him, he can point at me. Brothers do dick—" he coughed off the end of that word and she giggled and blushed. "_Bad_ things all the time."

"Harvey wouldn't do this to me," she said with a childlike certainty that was solidly reinforced by the existence of a stable relationship and the mutual protectiveness one had of the other.

"No," Dean said, finding a hypothetical situation that mirrored the present one as so absurd and unlikely that it simply placed Harry and Marc's relationship in sharp contrast. Marc had made a major gamble with his brother's financial life and it had fallen through in a blaze of inglorious infamy. Heck, compared to this, Dean could forget Sam, Ruby, and any mention of demon blood. "He wouldn't do this to you." And he was positive Jess would never do it to Harvey.

She looked around her once vibrant room to only be faced with bare walls. She had lived in that house as long as she could really remember. She had gone to school with the same kids for years. Jessica felt like she was being torn from the world, her hands tangled in the grass, clutching tight and screaming but no sounds were coming out because she couldn't say anything. Nobody had a choice in this, a voice in this, and that made the feeling even worse.

She quickly swatted her eyes, hoping no one saw it but also hoping someone did and would make it feel less bad. Little arms circled around her waist and Jess looked down to see Penny's imploring face, her own eyes brimming with tears.

"Don' cry, Jess. I love you, don' cry."

Jess made a little weak sound and lifted Penny up into her arms and swayed back and forth. Her comfort of Penny's anxieties calmed her own a little. She was still sad, mad even, but she appreciated having something to channel her energy to.

Dean stood back from the scene. He knew he'd be invited in if she wanted him. Jess wasn't the kind of kid that easily expressed the things of her heart.

A moment later she glanced over her shoulder wearing a quivering frown that told Dean a bigger hug was being requested. Dean went to both his girls and scooped them up, carrying them over to the window seat where they settled down.

"What's the main thing making you sad right now?" Dean asked her. Whenever they were upset, and they didn't want to be anymore, which Jess understood was a key component to the equation, they went to Dean who, more like a big brother who's been there before then a parent who suffers from 'Kid-Problems Amnesia,' knew how to get to the source of what made them feel the way they felt and help them resolve their emotions. If they only knew how many child psychology books he had read on his computer they would never again wonder what he did with his free time.

"Right now . . ." she began. Just before it was how everything was changing, then it was Marc, now it was, "I don't wanna leave," she said very honestly. Penny shook her head in vigorous agreement. Before, Jess felt she couldn't voice that to anyone since the pressure on her parents weren't in their control and she didn't want to add to it but now, the pressure was on her.

Dean didn't know what it was to really have roots or a homestead. Being with Lisa was the longest he'd spent in a real home but it was still 'Lisa's' despite their mutual bill payments. There had never been an instant where Dean had moved to an empty house or vacant apartment and decided where things he bought would go. It was such a foreign experience to him that this move excited him in some ways. Seeing it as Jess saw it would require him to feel he was being dishonest to compare one of a million motel rooms or condemned houses he grew up in to this, their castle in Valencia.

The first house he had lived in burned to the ground taking his mom with it. He didn't mourn the home, he mourned his mother. He never got attached to places after that as they were sources of hurt to him. In the first few days after she died, if his dad burned anything he was cooking on the motel room's kitchenette stove, a frequent occurrence since John Winchester wasn't known for his domestic accomplishments, a silent Dean would have panic attacks because of the smell of smoke. That's when John started feeding his son ready-made foods like cereal and sandwiches. He'd go out and buy pancakes for breakfast and keep a pie for snacks. They couldn't even have a toaster. Dean had latched onto the parent he had left; where they existed from moment to moment didn't count.

Apsara's memories didn't help either as she had gladly left her childhood home to live with Immanuel. Yes her new home would go on to burn but her attachments there were only to him and not to the abbey.

The closest he could come to sadness would be Marie leaving La Bonne Mère but in the end the place had scarred them so completely that memories of it were overshadowed by their last night there.

Dean Winchester/Campbell/Garcia was a nomad. Jessica Pearson wasn't. She was a little girl trying to understand her new reality.

"Starting junior high in a new school is adventure time," he said, drawing her out onto more familiar territory.

"I know. It's not that I guess. It would be nice to live somewhere with other kids close by," she said with a shrug. Penny again nodded in agreement.

"Maybe a corner store actually at the corner?" He offered.

She smiled. "A smaller place would be nice."

"Is it smaller?"

"I hope so. This place is like living in a museum," she said with a sigh. The sigh was Dean's cue that she turned a corner and the worst was over.

"Or a Bela Lugosi flick," he suggested.

She laughed at the accuracy of that. That's what this house was like. She reevaluated and guessed she was most upset not so much to leave as she was to be someplace new. That was a feeling she could better tackle. Jess hated the idea of being afraid of new things. The move had now just become a challenge to her sensibilities and she never backed down from those kinds of challenges.

"Thank you, Dean" she said, leaning against him. Penny crawled into his lap and snuggled next to Jess.

"No problem, Mini-Me." The first, second, and latest generation of le Blanc witches sat in the window seat of their stone fortress, saying a silent goodbye.

* * *

Everyone was camped out in the great room in sleeping bags. Everything was packed up and there were multiple boxes addressed to their new home. In the morning they would be on a plane to San Francisco and off to a whole new world. By midnight, everyone was sound asleep with a solitary alarm clock set to rouse them just after dawn. It was just after midnight when the sound of furious, frantic banging was heard on the front door.

Dean was out of his bag and on his feet before anyone's sleep-soaked mind could analyze the sound. Harry was up and gestured to Kathy to stay with the kids. Kathy caught a glance with Dean and they knew they'd have to hold it down and keep Harry and the kids safe if whoever was knocking turned out to be a threat.

Harry went to the door with Dean taking up a flank position.

"Open up!" A hard, raspy voice that was definitely Marc's screamed. Harry threw the door open and his brother ran in.

"Marc—"

"I wanted to do it. I wanted to—" The smell of alcohol emanated from him. "I didn't want to care anymore, I didn't care anymore, I thought I didn't but I couldn't do it—"

"Marc, listen, the kids have to get up early—"

He was frantic. "I started to write it all down. I wrote the note first, you know? _By the time you read this, I'll be gone_, you know?" He spoke rapidly and over his brother. Harry realized with a pang of trepidation his brother was describing what sounded like a suicide note. Harry put his hands on his brother's shoulders and held him still, shaking him a little. "I started and then I heard a dog barking outside and I froze up—"

"What are you—"

"I was gonna name it after Harvey, I was. The whole development," he nodded. His legs buckled and he went to the floor, his head in his hands. "I was gonna give it to him. I did it for him." He rocked back and forth. Harry looked to Dean who had just about as much of an idea as to what to do as Harry did. "She made it sound like jail was the worst but it's not. This is Hell, I know it. I know it now. I miss you guys already." He started to sob. Harry nodded to Dean and Dean acknowledged it, understanding. Harry sat down next to his brother, putting an arm around his shoulders. He forgave his little brother and made peace with him the moment Marc, shaking with emotion, leaned against his shoulder.

Moving quickly and quietly away, Dean went back into the great room to see four sets of anxious eyes looking towards him.

"Marc?" Kathy asked, recognizing the voice. Dean nodded. "What is he—"

"Saying goodbye," Dean said in the best way he could explain it. Most of Marcs words had been drunken gibberish but the gist could be evaluated. He was sorry. He had lost his family and he was sorry. Dean waved to the kids and told them to settle down. It took a few minutes but they obliged him by falling asleep.

Dean sat down across from Kathy on the floor and shook his head.

"What?" She asked.

"He's in a bad place," he said of Marc, "I don't know if Harry can leave him like this but—"

Kathy nodded. "I know. He has to." Dean agreed.

Bridges may mend but they never un-burn. Marc had built this and now he had to live with it. Dean was reminded again of how much of their lives were made up of simple and complex choices and the only guidance anyone ever really received was that small nagging feeling that maybe something was wrong. Dean wondered how that feeling had manifested for Marc before he decided to do all of this to Harry and his family. He wondered how choices had shaped one sibling differently than the other. He thought about him and Sam and then about Spencer and wondered what their lives would have been like without any intervention or involvement from Heaven and Hell. What kind of people would they have been? What kinds of lives would they have led?

Dean couldn't speculate as to whether they would be further apart but it was honestly difficult for him to imagine they could be any closer than they were, and for that, even through all of the shit they've been through, he was grateful.

He wondered, with some fear, if that was the point.

* * *

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	24. Family and Familiar Faces

**Chapter Twenty Four  
**  
**Family and Familiar Faces**

_Las Vegas, Nevada, 1981  
_  
Knowing in advance which planes would make it to their final destination in one piece was one comfort for Dean but those records never detailed truly awful and turbulence-filled rides. Their flight out of L.A. back in May had a bumpy patch that seemed to augment as he got steadily more anxious and nervous. With Kathy in the seat next to him, it was under her observation that noted somehow his nerves amplified the rockiness. She put her hand over his and told him very quietly in the language they shared to calm down.

Dean hated planes. That was no secret in the Specter/Pearson household. Only, no one had yet been witness to his very real anxiety. Kathy had a front row seat to the only thing she had ever seen cause him fear.

"I can't calm down," he said through gritted teeth, his eyes clamped shut, as the plane lurched again.

"Dean, you can settle this down. Don't forget who's in control here." The fact that she had to remind him he had it within himself to control all of nature was proof enough that he was being completely controlled by fright.

"I am _not _in control—"

"You are—"

"How do you figure?"

"So asks the airbender?"

He bit his tongue and remembered. Right. Actually _being _Mother Nature was easy enough if you didn't think the prospect in of itself was ridiculous to begin with. His past life of near-abject Dionysian hedonism couldn't be valid evidence for that assertion despite the rather effective green show he had put on his first day in Valencia. Who cared if women and children flocked to him on the street? It especially shouldn't matter that he knew he held a key role in the history of mankind. That tin can was shaking a million miles above the surface of the planet at the speed of Superman. How was that logical?-!

The plane rattled again.

"Dean, come on," she tried again, a pleading now in her voice. "The kids are scared."

He didn't need to open his eyes to confirm what she was saying was true. Everyone in the cabin was making noises similar to his or was frantically praying.

"Breathe," Kathy said. "Just breathe."

He did. He had to. In and out he followed his breath. Everything on the outside was tuned out and he focused on finding quiet inside of him. The rumbling in the cabin stopped and the ride smoothed out. People were making sounds of relief and thanking anything they could for the relief.

Dean opened his eyes. His memory of that flight had passed through him and he woke just then on a separate flight that had taken them from their home in the Bay to Las Vegas. People were clapping at touchdown and now they were taxiing to the gate.

"You slept through the whole flight," Kathy said to him. The six members of their household were split three to three along the starboard side of their plane. Jess, Harvey, and Penny were in the seats in front of them. Dean, Kathy, and Harry were lined up behind them. Dean took the aisle and promptly dozed off.

"How was the ride?" He asked.

"Pretty damned smooth, all told," Kathy said. "Maybe next time you can go for the window seat."

"Baby steps, right?" He smiled with a shake of his head telling her that wasn't _ever _going to happen.

Settling in to their new home was an experience none would forget. The house was an old Victorian structure that was built a hundred years prior. It occupied a modest half acre but it was stately in its modesty. Three floors with a finished basement and attic, what it lacked in breadth it made up for in height. It sported an above ground Victorian garden that was only slightly overgrown and a big empty backyard for the kids to do with as they liked. The porch wrapped around the entire house like a crown and a swing was installed to the side front. It was cozy to eyes that were used to excess but it was grand to Dean who saw in it something he hadn't had since he was four years old.

There were three bedrooms per upper floor. One would serve as the guest bedroom until Penny was old enough for her own space. For the time being, Dean and Penny, Jessica and Harvey were on the second floor while Kathy and Harry took the third.

The few repairs the house needed Dean managed to do and they all shared in painting and wallpapering after they'd all chosen their furniture and before it was delivered. A week after the move, everything was perfect and they quickly fell back into rhythm.

"Nervous?" Dean had asked Jess on her first day at school. He was driving her in as her classes began a few days before Harvey's elementary school, in the same building, was to start. Penny would be starting pre-k there the following week on a half-day schedule. The new school was also a Latin school, on Kathy's insistence. Jess had never gone to school alone for so long she had forgotten how it felt. She'd wanted to be up in the front seat with Dean, not like a taxicab rider but Dean never let them sit up front. He was very strict about height and seatbelts and all kinds of rules he said might not exist yet but they would and damn it if he was gonna put them in danger. She didn't get it but the general feeling around the house was to listen to Dean and so they rarely argued.

"My stomach's rumbling," she said in answer to his question.

"Hungry?"

"You asked if I was nervous," she said with a shake of her head.

"That was small talk. You're never nervous."

That made her smile. She carried that smile throughout her day.

Days later Harvey looked up to the imposing stone façade and gulped.

"Don't be nervous, Harve," Dean said to him, reading the terror on his face.

Harvey hastily painted a look of confidence into his expression, one he'd mimicked from Dean, and he said with Dean's own cocky air, "Nervous? I'm just sizing the place up."

Dean watched the kid do his best saunter as he walked into the building. "I think I've created a monster."

"Yes!" Penny shouted the following week, darting right out of the car before it was even to a complete stop. Dean scrambled out of the car, half of him wondering how she got out of her child seat, half of him wondering how she learned to run that fast. "School! School, school, school, school!" She chugged, a book bag the size of the Golden Gate Bridge bouncing on her back as she zipped through the front doors.

All three family cars, which had been delivered on the back of a flatbed a few days after they settled in, were put to use as the kids went in one direction and Kathy and Harry each went somewhere else. The budget didn't allow for a three-time a week housekeeper so that went to Dean who had learned hospital corners and how to clean up to regulation from his dad. The cooking was a separate issue. Harry and Kathy had usually split cooking duty as they each had specialties the kids enjoyed on rotation but with the new schedule, most of the meals now fell to Dean.

Cookbooks didn't help, Martha Stewart didn't help. Emeril Lagasse didn't click with him and Julia Child was more to be admired than emulated. More often than not dinner would default to pizza or Chinese takeout as he tried to figure out what the heck went wrong with his meal attempts until he discovered Rachael Ray.

Dean Garcia would marry Rachael Ray. He was sure Chuck had sent this woman to him out of a deep and pitying kindness.

His first successful meal was met with suspicion, trepidation, curiosity, and dread. A careful taste from the ever brave Jess and subsequent thumbs up opened a new world. Dean converted the old flower garden to an herb and vegetable garden and used a special word here and there to keep certain bugs and disease away. With a few more words he focused greenhouse energy over it that contained and protected it twenty four hours a day throughout the year. He grew things in the garden that no other garden in America should have been able to grow but the only one who knew that was Kathy and far from telling she wanted tips on how to do it herself.

"Is this a mango?" Kathy asked him one Saturday in late September. She thought when he asked her to help dig some things up he was talking about potatoes or carrots, not mangoes.

Dean took it from her, dusting it off and looking it over, "Yep. Seedless. Pointless to have the seed if you're just gonna make smoothies, right?"

"Dean, mangoes grow on trees and they come with seeds," she said halfway down Amazement Highway and paused at the intersection of Bullshit Boulevard.

He waved it a little, "Rename it then. How about, Not-A-Mango? Catchy?"

She pointed to a separate plot on the ground with large glossy leaves sticking out and asked, "And these?"

"Not-Bananas?"

She shook her head, just about completely flabbergasted. "And if a person wanted just an old fashioned apple?" She asked, looking around the garden for any tell-tale signs.

Dean rummaged through a bag of seeds he kept at his waist in a very Batman/utility belt kind of way (not at all like a fanny pack; no of course not). Finding one he liked, he want to Kathy and staked out a good location. Pressing the seed into the soil under him with his thumb, Dean sank his other fingers around it into the ground. A swirling breeze kicked up around Kathy's ankles as the soil around Dean's hand became dry as if something was drawing all the life from around it. A moment later Dean pushed in farther and dug out a fully grown, wonderfully red apple. He held it up to her.

"Oh my—" In her amazement, Kathy almost missed the cold blue color of his fingertips. "What—"

Shrugging off her worry he said, "The energy has to come from somewhere if they grow that fast. Most of it comes from the soil."

Most. Oh. She suddenly realized why he had collapsed that first day they'd met. All those plants that had come from nowhere were like flowers turning their faces to the sun. They were drawing power from him.

He shook out his fingers. "Don't worry."

"Who's worried?" Kathy asked as they quickly walked out of the airport, the memory drifting away. "As long as we get a cab we'll be on time," she said, knowing that was a conditional statement. William Reid and Mary Winchester had planned a surprise baby shower for Diana. Everyone had a three hour window to get to the Reid home in the Vegas suburbs if they wanted to be part of the big surprise. As luck would have it, a minibus was waiting at the curb as passengers left it on their way into the airport. Jumping in, they reached the small ranch house with a little under an hour to go.

"Holy crap," Dean said in pure amazement at the sheer number of people he could see through the windows of that very familiar house in Nevada. "Are these all—" he began to Kathy but a squeal and shout interrupted them.

"Kitty!" Someone from just inside the front door called out using a childhood nickname Kathy had never used around anyone of her own household.

"Mimi!" Kathy shouted back, dropping her bags.

Dean looked up to see his mother, Mary Winchester, race out of the house and practically tackle Kathy in a great embrace. In that space of time it was like he couldn't breathe. She happened to him each and every time he saw her. A piece of him would always die but something, a new memory, would grow over the empty spot.

Kathy and Mary stepped back and looked over the other to see what was new and what had changed since the last time they saw each other in the flesh. As often as they spoke and sent letters and photos, they hadn't been face to face since Samuel and Deanna's funeral eight years earlier.

"No curls?" Kathy asked twirling a finger around a very loose blonde lock.

Mary scrunched her hair with one hand. "Chasing a two year old leaves no time for primping."

"Try having two under five at the same time. Thought I'd die," Kathy said with a sigh of remembered exasperation.

"Dean's got it in his head he wants a little sister or brother. His favorite words are 'no,' 'mine,' and 'baby.'"

Dean blushed at that. As if it cued Kathy in to the fact that they were still standing outside, she gestured to everyone. "Mimi, you remember Harry," they shook hands.

"You taking care of her?" Mary asked with a grin.

"I don't need to be taken cared of," Kathy said swatting her cousin.

"She takes care of me if anything," Harry said by way of confession.

"And Jess and Harvey," Kathy said towards the kids.

"Hi," they said with small waves.

"Oh my gosh, you guys are like weeds!" Mary said, dropping down and putting out her hand for a shake. "Now, this is only if hugs are off-limits but I give them free of charge. The hand shake is a quarter each."

The kids giggled and gave her a hug.

"There we go. We've got a houseful of kids inside so go have some fun. If you break anything, hide the evidence and confess to nothing." They laughed. "Oh, who's this? Is this Penny?" Mary asked, having heard all about the newest member of the family from Kathy.

Penny gave a wobbly curtsey in her pinkest and fluffiest party dress and introduced herself as, "Penelope Maria Garcia, Queen of Magic and Disco."

Without losing a beat, Mary nodded and said, "Impressive resume, your majesty."

Penny beamed and ran into Mary's arms before giving her a big kiss on the cheek. She turned and held onto Jess's hand and waved bye with the others as the kids went into the house.

"She's like a piece of cake, my God," Mary said, holding her heart. It hit Dean in a very strange and new place to know that his mother had just met her granddaughter without knowing it.

Kathy looked to him and she read it so clearly on his face that she briefly touched his arm to comfort and warn him. Dean erased the hurt from his expression and left the happiness.

Mary bounced up and extended her hand to him. "You must be Dean," she said. She'd said it without really taking in his features but finally eye to eye she frowned a little. "Gosh, you are _so _familiar."

Dean almost hesitated to take her hand but it would be too obvious. He was in hunter territory. A houseful of vampire hunters, witches, demon and fallen angel killers was a few steps away. His mom knew how to read people too. Any false steps and he was worm food. He wondered if she remembered him from back in '73 but he had hoped that Michael's brain whammy in '78 included all memory of him too.

Mary glanced to Kathy and looked like she just realized something then she looked to Harry and tried to conceal the fact that she had something to say that really wasn't for his ears.

Kathy picked up on it and turned to Harry. "See if the kids want something to eat?" She asked.

"No problem," he said, carrying in the bag of gifts and a few of the overnight bags. The rest were still at the curb where the taxi driver had placed them.

Mary turned to Dean and Kathy. "Okay, _Dean_, _Penelope_, and _Maria_? Come on," she said as if someone was trying to pull the wool over her eyes. "That's why I recognize you isn't it?"

Neither Dean nor Kathy knew what to say. She pulled Kathy close and whispered in her ear. Kathy looked like a light went off and she nodded. "Ohh, right."

"Well?" Mary asked.

"Yep, you're right," Kathy said. Kathy elbowed Dean in the side a little, telling him to play along. "Cousins."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Mary asked her while throwing an absent hug around Dean. God his mother was strong.

"Harry doesn't know and I have no idea how to tell him, you know?" Kathy said.

Mary agreed to keep it silent knowing all about keeping one's past secret. She looked Dean over, nodding. "You said he was from Mexico? I didn't know we had family in Mexico."

"Uncle Rob spent ten years in Mexico," Kathy said in protest.

"Cause the feds were after him, not so he could settle down. The closest he got to Mexican culture was learning how to make a bottle of Tequila with a mouse in it."

"God, he still makes that stuff?" Kathy asked, making a face.

"Sells it mail order."

"He must like having the feds on his ass."

"Speaking of fed, Dave's inside. He's got news." She twirled a finger in a lackluster spin.

"He didn't," Kathy asked, blanching.

"He's officially a member of the dark side."

Dean had no idea how they did it. Even in his memories they did it so effectively but he could never imagine emulating it with accuracy. How could women hold entire conversations at the speed of light all the while looking straight at you and through you at the same time?

"What's John say?"

Mary shrugged. "What's John gonna say? You couldn't pay him to pick up a gun after 'Nam."

"Where is John?"

"Setting Dean down for a nap. Joe came over with us too, but he's on an ice run."

"Joe knows Vegas?"

"Joe knows everywhere. Don't ask me how a father and son can be so opposite. John can find his way around two places: Hanoi and Lawrence."

It was with that statement that Dean got a bit of a jolt. Was she talking about his dad's father? Was this Joe also known as Joe Winchester? How was it possible that Michael could have worn his dad's skin for millennia and then drop him off in Lawrence with a ready-made family? Then again, it wouldn't have taken much to do it, right? Michael could rewrite memories easy enough, couldn't he?

As if the talk of her own Dean had reminded her. "So, what's your specialty?" Mary asked him, as if he'd been part of the conversation the entire time.

"Um . . . a little bit of everything?" He said, not sure he caught the question.

Mary looked to Kathy for confirmation and she received it. She looked to Dean with a little more respect.

"A _little _bit?"

Kathy interceded for him saying, "Witch, mostly."

Mary narrowed her gaze on him and asked, "You use _witch_?"

Dean felt like he was going to get his neck snapped if he answered wrong. Since Kathy had said it he went along with her saying, "What else is there?"

Mary laughed like she had the best joke of the afternoon. She almost immediately warmed up to him then. Dean grabbed the bags and Mary led them towards the house. "I hate it when assholes try to use _wizard_ or _warlock_ or come on, _sorcerer_. It's like, dude get over yourself, you're a witch and everybody knows it."

Dean had never seen his mother like this before, it was another facet to her that had been hidden to him all those years. She was cool, easygoing, and relaxed when she was amongst her own people. There were a handful of 'civilians' as the hunters among them referred to the non-hunting family members and guests so all the conversations hovered at the edges of meanings and dealt with family and not monsters which she was clearly grateful for. Mary Winchester was out of the game and preferred the shoptalk to be limited to the human and the living.

In the space of five minutes Dean met aunts, uncles, and cousins he never knew existed. All the children running around were his contemporaries and he wondered how many if them were in the hunting game in thirty years. He also wondered with a lingering sick feeling which of them would have sufficient le Blanc and Campbell blood to be a proper vessel for Aeshma when it all came down to it. Which, if any of those children, would burn?

He shivered and had to go out to the backyard to get a little air. Everything was a little too overwhelming for him. He had family. He, Sam, and Spencer had a real honest to God family. What the hell happened after his mom died for his dad to pull them away from this massive support system? How could he just—

"He thinks they knew about it," a familiar voice answered the question he hadn't asked from just beyond the open sliding door behind him. Dean jumped a little and turned to see the much younger version of a face he knew very well. "Knew and didn't help. He thinks it, because that's what you'll tell me to tell him." His heart beat a little faster in his chest as she walked over and stood side by side with him. "You have had me waiting for a long while now."

Of course. John Winchester had gone to her and she told him the version of the truth he needed to hear to make everything flow according to script. It was another self-fulfilling prophecy. Dean had wondered why, if they did have generational roots to hunting, if his mom really had been a hunter since birth, why was it that his dad had avoided interacting with the hunting community after she had died? Surely he would have gotten to avenge her faster, easier if he'd joined up with whatever family she had left.

Why hadn't the elder Winchester trusted other hunters? He had been told not to. She had told him not to because Dean had asked her to lie, to preserve the status quo because, for whatever reason, Chuck needed them to fight this battle, no, this war, alone. Whether that was to protect them or to protect the family, Dean didn't know. All he was certain of was that he had to toe the line because he fully understood the consequences of not.

He looked to her. She was about his age or slightly younger. He had never imagined she ever could have been. There was just something about her that Dean associated with sage irascibility that just didn't come in a thirty year old shell.

"Campbell or le Blanc?" He asked, now understanding that she actually belonged to one of his two tribes.

"Honey, I'm a lover, not a fighter," she said shaking her head.

He exhaled. Right. Psychic, not hunter. "Le Blanc witch?"

She nodded. "Don't let me near a vampire. It wouldn't be my best moment."

"So you saw all this," he gestured around, "happen . . . ?"

"Last May."

"How much?"

"Did I see? Enough to know what extended heartsickness feels like. Lawrence isn't a big town and we're family. Every time I see her on the street I think about it and I wonder if I can I change it."

Dean confessed something then he had never expressed though he'd felt. "Last time I tried I think I caused it."

She tapped his arm. "Oh hush, that is not true, do not blame yourself. I know what the future looks like and sometimes it changes but mostly, at least once I can see it, it just stays the same. Mary is pretty damn fixed, I see that." Did his mom have to die? Was Mary so against hunting that even if she survived Azazel's attack she would still keep her family away from the hunting world? Would his mom be their biggest handicap? He didn't want to think about it that way. He couldn't understand it in such cynical terms.

He knew she was trying to comfort him and though technically she hadn't met him yet it felt like the first time all over again: she knew everything, he knew nothing, and he wasn't going to fight it.

Turning to her he said, "Hey, Missouri."

"Hey, Dean."

* * *

"Where are they anyway?" Kathy asked Mary as she helped her set up the gift table.

"Bill took her to a football game at the school."

"Annie and football? Not the best cover story."

"He said it was that or a movie but apparently they've seen everything twice. Annie's convinced she'll never leave the house again once she's, and I quote, _shackled to irreversible domesticity_, so—"

"She didn't say that—" Kathy said as if she were scandalized.

Mary snorted and added, "No, no, wait, so she's been out practically every night the past few months doing things she's convinced she'll never be able to do again once she has the baby."

"She does realize she's pregnant, right?"

"Bill called me so I'd call her to stop her from signing up to go sky diving the day she found out she was pregnant—"

"You're lying to me—"

Mary raised her hand. "Serious as a heart attack—"

"You are lying to me!"

"I swear that man sounded like he was going to cry." That was it and neither could control their laughter for the next few minutes.

"Did she?" Kathy asked.

"She did."

"She did not."

"He went up with her."

"Bill? Bill Reid? Jumping out of a plane? Tell me they have pictures."

"Her albums are all over the place. She's such a pack rat. When she comes we'll dig through all of it 'cause I don't even know where the heck to start. I've heard about a cave-diving trip at three months but I need to see the evidence." That sent another wave of laughter through them.

"Who's on food?" Kathy asked, looking at the exceptionally well-dressed gift table.

"Missy and Kate. Mike's setting up the grill."

In a set of families known for passing down names, at family parties and functions, several recurring names would pop up. Kathy immediately knew Missy was their cousin Missouri whose mother was a powerful third eye woman from the Delta. As for Kate and Mike it took Kathy a moment to eliminate the usual suspects and realize Mary was talking about Mike and Kate Guenther, Mike being a distant Campbell cousin and Kate being one of the Colorado le Blancs. Mike and John owned a mechanic shop in Lawrence.

"Hell, I didn't say two words to Missy yet," Kathy said, looking towards the kitchen with the intention of heading over.

"I think she was bringing Mike something, I saw her head out back." Mary said. "Um," she said before Kathy stepped away. Mary dropped her voice and asked, "Do you know any good sealing spells I could use?" Kathy was more than just a little shocked and Mary rolled her eyes. "I didn't ask for a nuclear bomb."

"Same reaction if you had. When was the last time you even cast a spell?"

"Err . . . ten years?"

"I should just hand you the nuke."

"Haha, serious."

"You do a sealing wrong and you might as well pin raw meat over your door. Get Missy to do it."

"I can't have Missy over doing a sealing. She's in the phone-book under 'psychic' for Pete's sake. Why don't I pin 'crazy' to my forehead before I go to bed."

"Don't tell me John hasn't met Missy yet—"

"She only came back up to Lawrence last year. She wasn't particular to meet him and she didn't have a mundane cover so," she shrugged.

"What are you sealing anyway?"

"The house."

"Your whole house? Why?"

Mary didn't want to elaborate on the fact that she'd sealed a covenant with a demon to save John's life. The only other person who knew was her sister Diana. If her entire family got involved it would be full out war between the Campbells, le Blancs, and the Yellow Eyed Demon Azazel. She had no doubt they would win but at what cost? And, as she saw it, for her own failures. No. She couldn't risk her family getting into this fight because of her.

"Well, Dean's at the age I have to worry about, you know," she said, implying any number of nasties that aimed for children.

"Ahh, true—"

"I'll see if I can't figure a way to get Missy to do it when John's at work," Mary quickly said, deciding to derail the conversation, knowing that the real reason she didn't want Missouri to be the one to seal her house was that the spell, to keep out an invited spirit, would need so much power that Mary would have to confess to what she'd done. There was also the lingering fear that if she purposefully and effectively blocked the covenant, what would happen to her soul? Would the demon own it? Would he collect, killing her in the process, and dragging her to Hell or would she be a displaced spirit, blocked from ever entering Heaven, forced to haunt the earth for all of time? She didn't know and the not knowing put lead in her actions.

"Mimi?" Kathy asked, seeing her expression drift.

The sound of breaking glass came from the direction of the kitchen. Mary snapped out of her solitary thoughts and let out a huff of frustration. "Annie's gonna kill us after this." She turned and went into the kitchen.

Harry Specter had met most of Kathy's family before at Samuel and Deanna Campbell's funeral but being reintroduced to everyone set his mind to motion. Something was strange about the collection of people there and he realized with an odd feeling what it was.

"Kathy?" He reached out to her before she followed Mary to the kitchen.

"There you are," she said. "Looking for the escape hatch already?"

He pulled her close and led her to a relatively quiet corner of the room. "Is it just me or have I just met two Deans, a Penelope, and a Mary, Marie, and a Maria?" She tried not to look like she'd swallowed a frog. He shook his head, a smile crossing his face. "I should have guessed. Ms. Granger? How the hell did I even believe that?"

"You like to see the good in people?" She offered, though rather lamely. She had expected him to be a little upset, to at least ask a few questions, but Harry seemed relieved. "What?"

"Huh?"

"That grin. What are you thinking?"

He coughed. "Well, if your cousin needed a job you could have just said so."

"I swear that really was just random chance. He had no idea, I had no idea."

"Seriously?" She nodded and there was enough truth in it to convince him. "Then he really is psychic." She said nothing. "It's strange. All this time I thought—" he began but declined to complete his sentence.

"What?"

"I don't know. I guess I thought you and Dean, you know."

She rolled her eyes and just shook her head. "_All _this time you thought that?"

"Well, for a while."

"Uh huh."

"What?"

"Nothing. You just look relieved."

"I do?" He asked, his cheeks coloring.

With a shrug she walked towards the kitchen saying, "A little."

* * *

"This is supposed to be a party." Missouri said to him. Dean wasn't sure he felt up to it. He really wasn't sure why he came at all but somewhere inside he was at the least satisfied that he did, if only to have that single question answered.

Their childhoods apart from all of this overwhelming show of family forced them to become a close, though at times personally unsatisfied, unit. Their early life influences were one another. In the end, they were each corrected by the other and in that, it made sense. Like Heaven's intervention in the basic attraction between his parents, sending Cupid to force their connection, Heaven had once again forced connections that chance alone may not have established. After all, there were a dozen kids in that house in Vegas, at least. If chance had been left to its own who's to say Dean and Sam would pick Spencer out of the crowd to interact with? Who's to say Spencer wouldn't have found more sympathetic friends in other family members that better matched his intellectual level? But conversely, who but Dean would have taught him how to block out the overwhelming thoughts? Who but Sam would have provided Spencer with the satisfaction of having someone really look up to and admire him, no longer making him feel like the youngest person in the room who constantly had to prove himself?

If the early connection hadn't been established between them, how could they have gotten through half of what they had been through thus far?

Dean understood then that their separation from their family at large had been a valid, though harsh necessity. There was an entire extended family out in the world for them. There were other le Blancs who hunted vampires or churned out the baddest Hoodoo on either side of the Mississippi. There were other Campbells, hunters of anything that went bump in the night, and stood as the vanguard against fallen angels. John Winchester never let his sons interact with them or honestly most other hunters their entire childhoods. On its face it didn't make sense, not if vengeance was the name of the game and he was starting at absolute zero on the hunting scale, unless he had a valid reason. The dictates of Heaven seemed to be valid reason enough.

"You're reading me aren't you?" He asked her, his eyes on the small backyard that was swarmed with racing and giggling kids.

"Your head's like a buffet table."

"What's on the menu?"

"Blame, worry, concern . . . pancakes?"

He smiled. "Ha. Got ya."

"I'm rolling," she said dryly. "Listen, you're gonna be back here a long time and you're gonna live through some troubling things. This is your healing time so you need to not focus on it all too much."

"Easier said," he muttered. Seeing his mom just triggered for him the fact that two years from then she was going to die and he couldn't do anything about it. He remembered how the last two occasions of time-interventionism paid off and he didn't want to go through that again. He had a choice to make all the while knowing the ending would occur no matter what. Mary was going to die as much as Marie was going to have her babies. If he was sent back to live a normal life then how did he define normal? That was the question, wasn't it?

"I'll try," he said, fighting with himself the entire time. If he couldn't save his mom, if he couldn't stop that tailspin from happening, if just by saving her he changed their entire future, possibly damning the world in the process by making he and Sam completely incapable of having the tools to deal with Lucifer and Aeshma and all the bag of tricks waiting for them whether they saved his mom or not then he knew there was something else for him to do, in his pauses of an idyllic life with Penny and their family. What that was, he had no idea, but whatever it was he was sure Chuck would clue him in sooner or later.

A baby-faced young man whose age Dean couldn't place over or under his own peeked passed the sliding glass doors and said to Missouri, "Missy, Kate said something was burning but she didn't know if that's how it was supposed to smell."

Missouri looked exasperated. "Cajun doesn't equal burnt—" she grumbled as she went back inside.

He looked to Dean and apologized for interrupting their conversation, "Sorry."

Dean shrugged, "I'd feel sorry for Kate." Dean could tell by the way he carried himself he was ex-military but he looked so young it was hard to really believe. He was tan with very black hair and a grin that said he was pleasantly amused most of the time. Dean extended his hand to him, introducing himself. "Dean Garcia."

The young man's grin turned to a smile. Apparently just by his name, Dean could tell he was easily separated from the 'civilians' in attendance.

He took Dean's hand and said, "David Rossi."

* * *

John Winchester left his little guy asleep in the only quiet room in the house. Bill and Diana's bedroom had been converted to coat and suitcase storage and also naptime ground zero. After the baby shower the plan was to clear the whole entourage down to almost an entire floor of a hotel on the strip that the family had reserved so Diana could have, in her sentiments as related to Bill, one final hurrah before confinement. A few of the older set would baby-sit as the rest would take in the nightlife. Diana didn't know about the shower but she knew her family would do _something _for her at some point in time so she made her wishes very clear to her husband: if they were going to live in Sin City then they might as well enjoy it. Vegas or bust, baby.

Moving out into the hall it always struck John how big Mary's family was. He had only ever had his dad as his mom had died before he could remember. There was something about an extended family that was very foreign to him. The closest he had ever gotten to that kind of relationship had only ever been through Mary. There was Dave via Samuel's side and there had been Wally via Kathy on Deanna's side.

Losing Wally had been hardest on Kathy, of course, but it also hit John in a different but significant way. He'd never lost anyone before. He had no memories of his mom so he couldn't really mourn her and there was no one else close to him but his dad who was still as lively as ever. The three of them: John, Wallace, and David had been their own version of the Rat Pack since high school. When he received the wire that Wally had died just a helicopter's ride away, for the first time John understood the real stakes of what he'd volunteered for. It was no longer the idealized image he held in his mind. It was no longer standing on principles but rather it immediately became kill or be killed, lose and loss. It was then that John became motivated to not only be the best, as any and everyone in the Marine Corps generally desired to be, but also in that awareness came a deep need, an urge, to be prepared for every contingency. He became a formulator then. In war he was another person.

John had always been soft spoken and mild-mannered, no one had ever disputed that. He had such a reputation for being square that to toughen up his image amongst his friends he had lied that his father, who generally kept himself to himself, was a mechanic who had taught him everything he knew when the reality was that his dad was an accountant and their entire family had apparently also been accountants and that John believed his future would ultimately involve learning the tax code by heart. Hell, he'd rather learn Latin for his troubles.

His entire life, he had tried to be something he wasn't and he generally failed at that pursuit (even Mary had later admitted that she had seen through the mechanic lie on their first date but kept it to herself the entire time they dated) but that day when Wally died, when Vietnam really hit him, when he realized he couldn't pretend his way through battle he finally transformed himself just to survive. He became a warrior, a machine. That machine's only directive was to get back home to Mary Campbell and build on the nearly empty foundation of his life, to build that family he never had. His determination brought him home with honor and that family was already emerging amongst the great and many oaks and branches of the Campbells and le Blancs.

At last he felt like there was somewhere he belonged.

A set of kids ran past him, some calling out, "Christian! You didn't!" Another shouting, "Gwen! Do you have it?" "Penny, where are you going with it?" "Ahhhhhh!"

A pink fluffy imp almost skittered past him carrying . . . an empty goldfish bowl? John easily scooped her up and disarmed her.

"Glass and running?"

"Bad idea?" She offered.

"Good answer." He settled her down. She straightened out her dress and then looked up to him like she'd break her neck but she didn't seem to much care. John almost felt small before her.

She curtsied and then extended her hand. "Penelope Garcia. Pleased to meet you."

She threw him off balance for just a moment but he quickly recovered by taking her tiny hand in his and saying, "John Winchester. Pleased to meet you."

She extended her hands to the bowl in a _gimme _motion. He shook his head. She exhaled. Almost sizing him up she said very plainly. "Then you will help."

"What?"

She took his hand and tugged him towards the backyard. "Save the fish."

* * *

"It was loose on Long Island? How'd she get it?" Dean asked completely rapt in the story Dave was weaving.

"Who knows? My dad knew about the family and what they did but he didn't want me involved in anything that went against morning mass. All I know is she drives up to the house in the middle of the night with the thing dead and strapped to the back of the pickup truck. It's the size if a bear, at least, and come on, she's five foot nothing. I'd heard her stories and thought the whole family was, you know, nuts, but there I was, twelve years old, watching my mom drive into our garage with the freaking _missing link _in the trunk. Get this, she said she dropped her lighter in the chase and came back for matches."

Dean hadn't expected to do a lot of laughing that day but he couldn't help it. Dave, in trying to explain that he was and also wasn't one of the initiated, told the story of what introduced him to the hunting world.

"That's awesome," he said, still chuckling. "So you grew up there?"

"On the island? Yeah, until I was about fourteen. Mom thought I was running with the wrong crowd. I admit, yeah, I was. So she sent me to live with Uncle Sam and Aunt Dee."

"Whoa, you lived in the same house with Mary?"

"You know Mary?"

"Uh, only through Kathy."

"Sam Campbell was a drill sergeant." Dean could attest to that. "Exactly what I needed." Dave looked down for a moment. Dean could tell something was hitting him hard just then. "I was stationed in Okinawa when they died. I sometimes think if I could have been there—"

"Don't do that," Dean said, knowing exactly what the end of that road looked like. "They wouldn't want that."

Dave huffed and gave him a half grin. "Yeah, that, or he'd be tasking me to analyze what went sideways and to come up with a viable alternate exit strategy."

God, that sounded exactly like his Dad. Dean shook his head and mirrored Dave's grin. "Or that too," he conceded. "Oh, hey, Mary said you had news?"

"Oh, yeah, well, I'm out of the FBI Academy. I'm set up in Quantico at the Behavioral Sciences Unit," he said with a smile that both said he was happy with that announcement yet anticipating the other person might not be.

In his head, Dean was saying in a tone that was a full-on, sarcasm-laced rebuke of himself, 'of course you are.' He admitted that he had no one else to blame. He'd gone through the pertinent data points of the tablet, especially Penny, Derek, and Spencer's first few years in the bureau but when every other case was some blend of child rape and mutilation, Dean set it down and told himself he'd get to the rest when his own memories had faded a little more sufficiently. By the time he was strong enough where he imagined he could deal with the subject matter, he was already well settled into his new life and it was so completely the opposite of murder and monsters that going back got harder and harder until he made a conscious decision not to. Now he had just met a potential key player in their future lives and he had no idea how he fit into the story. The first chance he got he would barricade himself in the bathroom and do a global search for 'David Rossi.' Hadn't the name seemed familiar when Kathy had first mentioned him the year before? Spencer or Derek must have mentioned him in passing.

Dean nodded, covering his shock and surprise with surprise and congratulations. "That's awesome!"

"You think? I mean, obviously I think so but everyone acts like I decided to defect to Cuba."

"You're in a family of freelance monster hunters and you've decided to hunt people on salary. Be glad they didn't stage an intervention."

"I think they might be planning one," he said with a chuckle. "Besides, they hear that part and we get into a big discussion about why they're sure I'm losing my mind and I never get to really explain."

"Go on."

"Really?" No one in his family had ever asked him his motivations so that moment felt like an opportunity. "Well, think about it. The Feds must get a lot of information from all over the country regarding suspicious deaths, right? It makes sense that a good percentage of the cases would be because of non-human causes, right? So, imagine someone on the inside with access to those files who knows how to filter human from monster. I send those case files out to this crowd who'll know how to handle them."

"That's . . . a great idea," Dean said, genuinely impressed with the notion. He had grown up getting cases from newspapers or the net but the sources were generally of shady origin with few details. He'd often found himself driving through and past towns and cities he would later discover needed desperate help but the media on them had been lacking. Dave's plan was absolutely amazing as police kept close to the vest more than they ever revealed to reporters.

Dean also realized in this revelation, if he could believe the coincidence without confirmation, David Rossi was essentially a double-agent hunter who would know all about Spencer and Diana. Diana would know about him as well but if Spencer had known about him in this capacity he would have reached out to Dave, not Bobby, when the white eyes turned his world upside down. There had to be a reason Dave and Diana would keep his true identity from Spencer if Dave was still alive during their timeline. Dean could imagine an easy resolution to the question and it lie primarily with Dave's reasons for joining the FBI and it was to be a hunter in Fed's clothing. Diana tried to keep that world separate from Spencer's reality. She had only lapsed into truth telling during her episodes of sickness.

Was it possible that before Diana was committed, Dave had funneled cases to her and through her out to Sioux Falls or another central hunting hub? The possible connections were limitless.

"You think so?" Dave asked.

"Absolutely."

A string of 'heys' and 'hellos' brought their attention through the glass sliding doors and out to the front door where an older man was entering, lugging in a few bags of ice that seemed almost too much for him to be able to carry as there was a cane in one of his hands but carry them he was. Mary, Kathy, and Missouri went to him and helped detangle the bags from his hands, lightening his load.

Dean didn't catch most of that peripheral movement. He no longer even heard the others say hello to the returning ice-fetcher. Dean only saw him and the old man only saw him as if he'd entered the home expecting to see him.

"Looks like Joe got enough ice to freeze hell over," Dave said.

"Joe?" Dean asked in a barely audible voice.

"Oh, I should introduce you guys, come on," Dave said, sliding the door and stepping towards the old man. "He's a civilian so," Dave added, telling Dean not to expose the secrets of their little colony. Dean was sure the man already knew everything he needed to know about them all.

Dean didn't know why his feet felt like lead, it wasn't like he was scared . . . well, not _that _scared. But to see him like this, to see him here like that, with people acting like he was their favorite uncle and the party could finally start completely unnerved him. Dean's hand instinctively went to his pocket and he felt the white-stoned ring he was obliged to carry until he could reach his own time. Had he felt it? Wouldn't he have felt it a year ago? Maybe its Juju only worked when it was in close proximity to a Campbell? He didn't know. What he knew for certain was he was walking over to the man he'd eaten deep-dish pizza with in Chicago. He was walking over to the man he associated completely with the title of Death. Dean was also sure he wasn't just walking towards a vessel that wouldn't be occupied for sometime as the man's eyes had tracked him the entire way like they had a psychic link.

"Dean Garcia," Dave began the introductions once the two men were face to face in the crowd. "Meet my best buddy's pop, Joseph Winchester."

His grandpa? The Archangel Michael was his grandpa? Death was his grandpa?

"Pleased to meet you," the older man said, extending his hand. Dean tried to smile and not be too obviously reluctant when he took his hand. The moment their hands touched, time around them stopped. It was like a freeze frame. No one moved, no one breathed except for Dean and 'Joe.'

"What the hell are you doing here?" Dean demanded.

"I could ask the same. Your being here wasn't exactly part of the story," Death said. It was true. Penny's existence was a complete surprise.

"Joe Winchester? How the hell are you even—?"

"Oh, come on, think. How would it work if John dropped from the sky? No family, no history, in the middle of hunting hometown USA?"

"So you what? Act as a cover? As his dad?-! Don't you people have rulebooks or something?"

"I made him younger, moved into the town in '59. It gave him plenty of time to make roots."

"Wait, made him younger? You can—"

"You don't really think Enoch looked like that at three hundred and sixty five years old, do you?" Death was making Dean feel really dumb. Heck, Jimmy Novak's body had been blown to shreds. If they could piece Humpty back together and wiggle through time, they could make someone young.

"But, wait, _exactly_. Enoch _is your bloodline_. How are you hopping around in this guy? Dad should be your only vessel." It was then that Death did something Dean didn't expect: he looked uncomfortable. Like a kid with his hand stuck in a candy jar. "What did you do?"

"Well, the only bloodline strong enough in the generation to work a hundred percent would be through a merging of the le Blanc/Campbells. Aeshma's constructs through you three. But the lines only first merged with Deanna and Samuel. I had to compromise with a Campbell," he gestured to the cane to illustrate the minor insufficiency of the vessel, "with the closest blood ties to . . . you three."

A Campbell with the . . .

"Whose body is that?" Dean asked, his temper rising. Before then he would be intimidated by the simple knowledge of the sheer power that stood before him but it was in that instant, in his flash of indignant anger that he remembered who he was and his relation to the angels—all the angels. He may not have been one of them in the literal sense but he had it in him to destroy them as Zachariah well knew. At a minimum he was what all the evidence pointed to: that feminine aspect of Chuck.

"Moishe Campbell. David and Nishtha's second—"

The house rumbled underneath them. No furniture in the house shook as they were still frozen in time but the land below rocked. Dean's green eyes were lighting like tinder.

"Calm down," Michael warned. He seemed equal parts very impressed that Dean could break past his control and also frightened for the same reason. "He was at the end of his life. He gave his consen—"

The house rattled again.

"Dean—"

"Are you out of your motherflipping mind—?-!" His words sent a low ringing pain through the other. Michael flinched away from the sound. A crack shot through the glass door. The sound of that brought Dean back to reality. He could cause way too much damage to a house that contained not only his entire extended family, but his kids too.

He raised his hands like he both wanted to strangle Michael _and _claw his eyes out. Breathing, he calmed himself, putting his palms together, and just ground out through clenched teeth, "Just wait until I talk to your Father about this."

Death blanched.

"And fix the glass," Dean said, extending his hand to resume their handshake. He painted a smile on his face and Michael grumbled, taking his hand. Time resumed.

A set of screams rattled everyone.

* * *

"Christian, how could you!" A little boy asked, shaking his head like he just didn't understand.

A few of the kids were screaming and the rest looked like they were screaming on the inside.

Into the fruit punch bowl Christian Campbell, the resident mini-tormenter of small children and animals, had poured Diana and William Reid's goldfish Byron, Tennyson, Godwin, and Wollstonecraft. A set of four children were hurriedly circled about the punch bowl fishing out the fish. Harvey and Jess were angling while another tiny Campbell cousin, Gwen, was helping Penny rinse them off in fresh water. John, who had been recruited for the rescue mission by Penny, stood with the fish bowl.

"What's going on?" Mary asked, one of the first adults on the scene who had full whoop-ass authority. Christian bolted. Missouri had already told Kathy where to stand to catch his 'sadistic little ass' as she called it. Kathy caught him up by the scruff of his neck and didn't have to say a word. He shrank away from her but her grip was a vice.

The rest of the family party watched as the fish were gently plucked out, cleaned off, and deposited into the bowl John held.

Penny looked them over and shook her head a little frantically. "Daddy!" She cried out. Dean pushed past everyone and was at her side in a moment. "Daddy, the fishes!" She said with urgency.

Dean came face to face with his dad. John gave him a look all parents understood and then glanced down to the bowl in his hands. Dean had to push away the desire to just stare at him and followed his glance. Two of the fish were floating to the top.

Penny tugged at his belt loop and quietly urged, "Fix them."

Dean had to decide if this was the point in time where he taught Penelope about death. He had to decide if a baby shower should be filled with horrified children. He had to figure if he could make the day memorable for something terrible that no kid would forget or for the happy occasion of Spencer's birth.

In terms of omens, Dean decided to play it safe. He gestured to John for the bowl. John passed it to him, glad his son was napping away from this.

Dean crouched down to Penny. "Fix? What's wrong?" He asked as he dipped a finger into the top of the water and gently twirled it in a soft circle. As if waking up from a dream, the fish kicked and spun through the mild wave. The kids shouted in joy and the adults were glad the potential junior angst was avoided. Penny took the fish bowl into her hands and then kissed her daddy's cheek. She knew he could fix them. Her daddy could fix _everything_. She turned to the other kids who gathered around the recuperating fish.

Mary was at Dean's side in a moment and said to John, "Can you tell Kate we're gonna need a new bowl of punch?" She looked to the arrested Christian. "Take that one with you. He can help cook the rest of the day. If he talks back, hit him with a spoon."

John chuckled, shaking his head. He'd wanted to meet the new stranger, get introduced, but when Mary sounded like that he liked to avoid delay. As soon as John was inside with Christian and the rest of the party back to business, Mary helped Dean to his feet.

"Missy said—" she began but too much of his weight was on her. Kathy was there a moment later. She pulled up a chair for him and they set him down. Missouri came out from where she'd been keeping out of John's eye line.

Dean felt like he'd been knocked down. Maybe not so much as by a car but a really fast, over packed shopping cart. Two dead and two half-dead fish probably didn't seem like much but reanimating the dead, no matter how small, was rather substantial. His ears were ringing. Someone tilted his head back and a wad of napkins were being held to his face as his nose was pinched.

"I'm okay," he garbled, keeping his eyes closed. He felt like he was on a tilt-a-wheel.

The three women looked to one another and rolled their eyes.

A look of deep concentration passed over Missouri's features before letting up. She looked over her shoulder and waved over the first person she saw. She instructed, "Hold this here," before she said to Kathy and Mary, "Diana's five minutes out."

The women around her nearly jumped in excitement.

To Dean she said, "You okay?"

"Didn't I just say that?" She patted his shoulder. He squinted to see them move away to tell the party guests the guest of honor was almost there. He looked up to see Joe Winchester hovering over him.

"Hey gramps," Dean groaned. He leaned forward and shooed him away.

Michael shook his head as he pulled away from him. "I see you learned how to do a transference but please tell me it's not always this . . . _suicidal_."

"Shut up. Go away."

"No."

A sound of frustrated annoyance escaped him. Dean didn't want to explain it since he knew the archangel would never understand. He looked up to him again. The Angel of Death was expecting an answer.

"I know how you guys operate when you heal someone. I figured it out. Don't think I didn't notice the patch of trees around me when Cas pulled me out of Hell. _Everything _was dead."

"Life energy has to come from something living. We're not living. That's obvious. We generally lift it from an obscure part of another universe but, _admittedly_, you were a larger project than most."

"Ding, ding, ding. Which is why the demons need to have me permanently put under before they can do anything, right? How can you get that and not the rest? You did read the part of the story when Marie was healing Spencer and she used me as an extension cord, right? She thought she was pulling everything from the woods—"

"But her power latched onto the primary source," Michael said, understanding.

"Yep. Me. Damn near killed me. Every time I heal something, grow something too fast, no matter which way I turn it, some of it always wants to come from me." He shook his head and mumbled, "It's as annoying as fuck."

"Can't you just create the energy instead of transfer it? You have that power."

Dean seemed to laugh at the word '_just_.' "Yeah, lemme open up _that_ door anytime I want. I'm sure my dad wouldn't have noticed the flowers growing out of the pavement at my feet just now. Oh, how 'bout this, how about you go around talking to people in your angel voice all the time and see how well that works. Maybe you'll luck out and not _everyone's _head'll explode."

"I like you so much better as a two year old," Michael murmured in tongues.

"The ladies tell you that a lot, huh?" Dean shot back, also in tongues.

Michael looked to him, shocked. The moment only lasted a second before he cracked a smile. Dean tried to bite back a reaction but he couldn't help it. He smiled and then chuckled.

Extending his hand, Michael effectively signaled a truce. Dean took the hand accepting it. His 'grandfather' healed him, putting the color back into his cheeks. Shouts of '_surprise_!' filtered across to them from inside the house. The party in Vegas had started.

* * *

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	25. Take Her into Your Heart

**Chapter Twenty Five**

**Take Her into Your Heart**

He'd been to the strip before but never in a group. Maybe if he'd gone to college, joined a fraternity, Vegas as an _event_ would have been something he'd be accustomed to. He'd been there a couple of times with Sam, a few times on his own, but never with a group and of course, _never_ with his entire family in tow. It was like a social experiment gone awry. It was like a reality television show whose premise was: take the adults in a family and plant a spy amongst them. This spy will be one of the children of said adult group. This spy will be treated as one of the adults and the adults will behave _exceedingly badly_.

He only found solace in the comforting sympathy of Kathy and Missy who both, once or twice, shielded him from the things he knew he'd need brain-bleach for later.

When the Campbells and le Blancs threw a party, they _threw a party_. If it hadn't also been a baby shower, where there was no alcohol consumed, he could only imagine the next level it would have been taken to.

It started with the dancing. What his parents were doing wasn't qualified to be called 'dancing.' Dean wondered what kind of banned narcotic sex-drug must have been in the tips of Cupid's arrows for them to do what he was seeing. He stood awkwardly in the nightclub, shuffling his feet, avoiding the more than one woman who tried to dance with him, and tried to not to look like a creepy stalker by the way he watched Mary and John Winchester dance.

Then it was the gambling. Missouri would hop from slot machine to slot machine, collecting jackpot after convenient jackpot. Roulette was Grandpa Joe's game, for obvious reasons. Death bet on black and somehow black always won.

John and David, who Dean was surprised to learn during the party, being his dad's best friend, was also baby Dean's godfather, played poker at separate tables and got a crowd of followers. Their win ratio wasn't as overt as the supernatural family members among them, but years in Vietnam left little for Marines to do in their downtime than get _really _good at card games.

Mary, Diana, and Kathy hit the black jack tables and with a little help from Kathy, somehow consistently won over the house.

The rest of the clan did the same in other endeavors and Dean just stood to the side with Harry feeling an odd confirmation that he came from a distinguished line of sharks.

"Are they _all _winning?" Harry asked in amazement. The fifty dollars in chips he'd invested in the trip had quickly dwindled to nothing. Harry wasn't cheap, he just knew with confidence he lacked any form of poker face.

"I don't even know what I'm looking at," Bill Reid said, tending a club soda and watching his pregnant wife win mortgage money for the next three years.

"Are they _trying_ to get kicked out?" Dean replied with a question of his own. He didn't even try to hit the slots or tables; as soon as he moved to settle in he saw the score. It was almost too much. _Almost_. Mostly it was just educational.

"Cheese it!" Missy called to those closest to her. The word went around like wild fire and games were quickly wrapped up and chips cashed in just in time for the group to exit to a new casino with security on their tails. A round of satisfied laughter passed and the events repeated until the resident mommy to be was tuckered out.

Beds were collapsed on, shoes were half kicked off, and sleep welcomed them.

Dean found himself sharing a room in the hotel with Grandpa Joe at Joe's insistence.

"Great," Dean said, toeing off his boots.

"I know you're flattered," Joe said with a grin. "But of course you're the only one who'll understand if I disappear for a minute or two . . . or the entire night."

Right. This was his time and he was still the Archangel Michael. He had concurrent duties.

"Before you," Dean smiled a little mischievously, "flutter off—" Joe sighed and ignored him. "Did you feel the ring when I came over last year?"

"Of course." He could see Dean's unspoken follow up question. "I occasionally travel through time. When I do, of course there will be two of me in the same reality. I don't register it as anything. When it moves in the proximity of those under my care then I get a little more curious."

"You figure you came to change something?"

"Which is an absurd prospect. Once something happens it has happened. Moving forward is a glimpse to one of an infinite number if possibilities, nothing is set so it's equivalent to playing in a sandbox. Moving backward is only active if it is to lead to what is considered fixed events. It would be foolish of me to even think I could alter the past unless I was an agent of it as well."

"Like this trip I'm on right now?"

"Exactly. This is the past for them in relation to the current timeline. It has already happened. It is also your personal current timeline. From what you've told me about her, Penelope is who she is because of this journey you, Sam, and Spencer are on. She already existed in your timeline; you simply came back to close the paradox."

Dean thought of the other actions they'd taken in this journey. Saving Mani and Sara. Ensuring Nini was in Whitechapel to save Churchill. And Marie? Perhaps not saving her from that night, but being there to get her away that morning. Closing the paradox. It was a weird way to see time. To know everything they'd done in the past was to ensure a future they already existed in.

"I still don't understand why we had to take Penelope from Marie," Dean said, only imagining how impossible it would have been for him to let her go. Marie's heartache echoed through him at the thought.

"Because she's a part of you; that was never her time to begin with," Michael said as if it were obvious.

"I get that, but only because we made it that way. What does Spencer call it? Um, right. Circular."

"No, you don't understand. The same way Aeshma can impart his angelic aspect through reproduction with humans, the same way I can use your body as my vessel because you are the child of my vessel, we leave markers in the blood of our hosts that they pass down through their children. It's why Azazel had to receive permission to get access to Sam and why he fed Sam his blood. Azazel is Lucifer's child. His angelic aspect is Lucifer's."

"But, come on that was like two drops—"

"To start. And then Sam's possession by one of Azazel's own creations—you called her Meg."

Dean's stomach dropped. "They were serious about that? I mean, the whole dad, kid thing?"

"Nephilim. Born human to a fallen father, human mother, twisted in life, deformed in death. Azazel created most of them with Lilith before her death. Throughout time he made several others. Alistair is one—" Unconsciously, Dean shivered. "Your Ruby was one as well."

Shit. Fuck. "That's why she got Sam on the blood. Her blood was Azazel's. His was Lucifer's." He already knew that though, right? They had been building Lucifer's ultimate vessel but that was the missing branch in the story wasn't it? Neither Dean nor Adam needed to ingest 'angel blood' to play house to Michael, it just _was_. It just _happened_. They were ready-made because of John, because of the marker in John's blood.

If Sam was really Lucifer's vessel then why did they need to prep him so much? Why would Azazel have to go into the nursery that night at all? Why feed him the blood if the bloodline already existed? None of it had to start off as some elaborate plan, did it? Not in the beginning.

Create a vessel for Lucy, get Dean down to Hell, and jack Spencer up on the side. Wouldn't it all have been much easier if they hadn't created a vengeful badass in John Winchester? Wouldn't it have been easier if the three of them had grown up as disparate people like Harry and Marc? Dean, because of his time with the Djinn, had already seen what life could have been if he and Sam hadn't been raised calling the Impala home. It was a shadow of their connection but the tradeoff was a white picket fence and their mother's smiling face.

_Shit_.

"So, with Penny you're saying it's the same?"

"Yes. Just as Aeshma and René were one being when Penelope and Jean Louise were conceived, you and Marie were one. Your aspect, the current version of the entity you now are, created Penelope. Your blood runs through her." He touched the side of his nose and said, "I can tell."

Dean had to sit down but he was already seated on the bed. He decided to lie down. Staring at the ceiling Dean said nothing, thought nothing, _was_ absolutely _nothing_ for a while. Of course he didn't feel any differently, Marie had ensured that. He didn't feel more of a dad now that he was faced with the confirmation that he in fact _was _in the most technical sense. Or was he still her mom, just twice over? Was she Aeshma and his, or his and Marie's? That thought broke through the emptiness of the night and he looked around. He was alone.

It had been a long day that had led to a longer night but he suddenly felt his separation from her so sharply that he slipped his feet back into his boots and he was writing a note to Kathy before he knew. Getting his bag, Dean slipped the note under the door to the room Kathy and Missy shared.

He was downstairs and hailing a cab just as the witching hour rang through Sin City. He couldn't explain exactly all the thoughts and feelings that occupied him on the drive to the Reid home. He didn't have to wake anyone as the key from Chuck was always on him and it opened the screen and front door with ease. The elder hunters camped out in the living room only momentarily raised weapons to him before he stepped in and over the chalk Devil's trap etched on the floor. One of the witches evaluated his intent then yawned at the lack of evil she found there. They fell back to sleep.

Damn, his family was one character after another.

The kids were split up among the two bedrooms and the small nursery. In Diana and Bill's room he found Jess, Harvey, baby Dean, and Penny curled up on the queen-sized bed. Penny's arm was thrown over Dean and she held him like a teddy bear. Harvey and Jess flanked either side to make sure neither rolled off the mattress. Dean quietly entered and sat in Diana's easy chair by what seemed to be a reading nook. Victorian novels were well loved and worn to one side and fifteenth-century tomes were neatly organized on the side under a pen and legal pad. With this perch to watch over the children, he fell asleep.

* * *

He woke up the next morning to tiny hands squishing his face. "Daaaaaddyyy."

"Pennnyyy."

"Morning, Daddy," she said before climbing up into his lap.

"Hey, Baby Girl."

He felt even smaller hands tapping his kneecaps. Dean squinted down to see the toddler version of himself waving good morning. He hadn't seen his hair that long in a while. God, he was blond.

"Wanna come up?" He asked himself.

Baby Dean nodded. Dean lifted him up and set him opposite Penny.

"His name's Dean too," Penny informed him.

"Well think about that." Dean looked to the kid. "Pleased to meet you, Dean." He gave him a little wave that baby Dean mimicked with a pudgy-cheeked giggle.

"Morning, Dean," Harvey called from his reclined spot on the bed. Jess was already up and sitting cross-legged and looking in their direction. She waved good morning.

"You guys been up a while?" Dean asked.

They all shook their heads 'no' but he could see they were lying. "What's the sitch?"

"Christian," Jess said. "They shoulda named him _Anti-Christian _'cause he's awful."

"That's why you're in here? Hiding out?"

Harvey seemed imminently insulted. "Am not," he protested.

Jess thumbed to Harvey and said, "Yeah, he is."

"And you?" Dean asked her.

"We're family and I'm a head taller than the kid. If I go at him it's over."

"So this is you being diplomatic?"

She pointed to him, "Exactly. See? You and me? Same page."

"Okay, I'm awake. Go get washed up and I'll see what the ancients have planned for breakfast."

They all bolted for the bathroom, most doing the pee-pee dance.

"Seriously?" Dean asked no one in particular. He stretched out his legs, by now so well used to sleeping in a comfortable and proper bed that the easy chair did him no favors.

He did a quick headcount of all the munchkins in attendance and wondered once more just how many of them were around in three decades.

Cereal looked to be Bill and Annie Reid's breakfast of choice. In a few grocery bags left on the counter was some pancake mix and a gallon bottle of mapleish corn syrup. The ancients had whipped out a stack of bowls, a stack of spoons, and had gone out to the backyard to play Dominoes and Hearts.

"Damned hunters," he muttered. Dean scoured the entire kitchen and rummaged up some supplies. With as many kids as there were he'd have to get creative. The problem with kids though is if they liked something enough and they were hungry enough they'd go for seconds, thirds, etc. He hated the prospect of not having enough food for them.

"How many fish and loaves of bread does it take to feed a houseful of kids?" He groaned, looking at the dearth of edible kid-food.

"You want to feed them fish and bread for breakfast?"

Dean jumped at the voice and turned to see Grandpa Joe standing by the kitchen door.

"What are you—?"

"I came back to the hotel room and you were gone. I waited, imagining since it was Vegas—"

"Can't you track me? The ring?"

"I can sense the ring, not track it. It's from a different point in time so the energy is hard to pinpoint outside of general area. I'd felt it was in London when you went to David and Nishtha but beyond that," he shrugged. "As for you, not since Castiel etched that little warding on your ribcage."

Oh. Right.

"So, they're up yet?" He asked, regarding the adults.

"Hardly. I doubt it'll happen before noon."

Dean sighed. "Think you can help?" He asked, gesturing to the counter.

"What? Cook?"

"Don't look like I'm about to mow you. And please tell me you fed my dad more than—_manna from heaven _every morning like it was oatmeal."

A beat.

"Manna is actually quite nutritious—"

"For Chuck's sake—"

"It was a joke," Joe said. "You don't actually _need _to cook. I can just get what you want."

"Eggs, bacon, self-rising flour—"

"Or I can do what I usually do and raid a diner—"

"Unsalted butter, real maple syrup, strawberry jam—"

"You're insisting on this?" He asked, looking around the kitchen like it was a disease.

"Are you writing it down?"

Joe waved his hand and the table was stocked. There was enough food there to feed a platoon. "I'm going to play Hearts," he turned and headed out back.

Dean looked around for something to cover up with and found one of the shower gifts tucked away out of sight. Diana had called it an ironic symbol of the patriarchy . . . but funny. It was a waist apron that said, "Kiss the Cook, Kill the Monster."

Tying it around him he tackled breakfast. With a word and a whisper he set the eggs beating, the bacon frying, the pancakes flipping and the biscuits rising all at the same time. Being a telekinetic helped when you had a million little mouths to feed. In nearly no time at all, the platters were filled and he was laying everything out. A few of the kids ran in and the call went out that breakfast, _a real breakfast_, was waiting for them.

Cheers and whoops were sounded and they all stacked their plates high and found spaces to sit and eat. His three munchkins gave him the thumbs up after digging in. Dean retreated back to the kitchen where he was dreading doing the dishes but was surprised to find it spotless. A steaming mug of coffee and a piece of apple pie waited for him on the table.

He smiled. "Thanks, gramps."

Dean sat down and closed his eyes taking in the sounds around him. Happy children beyond one wall, contented adults beyond the other. There was a point in time when his family consisted of more than his heartbroken father and his disenchanted little brother. This was that point in time.

He savored it.

He savored it.

It would never be like this again.

* * *

They were headed out, saying their goodbyes. Dean had, as Missouri had done in her avoidance of John, kept himself as much away from his Aunt Diana as he could which was easy enough given the size of the party. Kathy had been right, in the end he'd only been a face in the crowd.

Dean stepped out with the kids as there were a few taxis at the curb picking up those family members who were headed to the airport. Harry and Kathy were saying extended goodbyes. Dave squeezed out the front door and waved Dean over.

"Wow, I think I had to actually climb _over _people just now," he said with a laugh.

"Me and the kids dropped and crabwalked. Seemed easiest."

"I wanted to ask you, um," he gestured Dean away from the earshot of the kids. "Well, I figure you know your stuff, after what you did with the fish—"

"That was nothing—"

"See, that's what I thought since I'm still so green but everybody who knows the score was talking like they just saw the first Easter."

"Dave—"

"I get it; you're out but just tell me, do you know your stuff? Honest question."

Dean couldn't lie to him. "I guess I know enough. Why?"

"Well, none of them will help with the idea, you know? I never knew a prouder set of mules."

"Ha. Wait 'til you meet my dad."

Dave understood the sentiment as his own father was nearly impossible to deal with. "What I'm asking is can you be my contact? Most of them already respect you which is more than I can say about me, black sheep and all. I'd fax you the files, you sort it and act as a distributor. Kathy's got everybody's number."

Dean had already investigated who Dave Rossi was in Penny, Spencer, and Derek's lives. He was one of their teammates. Both Spencer and Penelope looked up to him more than anything. He was even teaching Penny to cook which seemed almost to be as big a challenge as Dean had faced.

Dave was a good man with a good heart and a life-saving, radical idea. Dean had wondered the purpose of going to Spencer's baby shower in terms of the great scheme of things and he had no doubt he'd just found it. Hadn't he always pictured his retirement, if he had lived to retire, as a hunter in the vein of Bobby? A homesteader. An organizer. To be in their world just enough to know he was still saving people, hunting things, but having the anonymity to live a regular life.

"I think I'm gonna have to get my own fax line," he said.

Dave couldn't hide his excitement. "That's a yes?" Dean nodded. "Yes! Excellent. Perfect. Here's my card," he pulled out a business card and a pen. On the back of the card he wrote his home number and handed it to Dean. Dean looked at it and flipped it over. Special Agent David Rossi. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Quantico, Virginia. "I'll call tomorrow afternoon, eveningish, set it all up. Okay?"

"Okay." Dave took Dean's hand in a shake and a thirty year friendship was born.

* * *

A new phone and fax line was set up in the attic. Harry, eternally at work, plotting to inaugurate the digital age, observed very little in terms of home life. The fact that his driver/au pair was moonlighting as a supernatural Watchtower was lost on him. Kathy appreciated having some ties back to the life she grew up in even though most of her time was busy with case law and not the Wendigo that was thought to be a serial kidnapper in West Virginia or the mysterious disappearances that were actually caused by a Vampire nest outside Salt Lake City and not human traffickers. Those were the kinds of cases Dave sent to what was now known in the hunting world as the San Francisco Home Office.

Even hunters Dean knew in the future would sometimes call in for cases. Rufus Turner was a crotchety old bastard even as a young man. Pastor Jim Murphy hadn't always been a pastor but had _always _been a monk. Bill Harvelle took the bulk of the cases that dealt with the Midwest as he was in charge of the Central hub out of Nebraska.

During all this, the kids were thriving in school. Jessica joined mock trial and she signed up for archery club after receiving multiple assurances from Dean that she wouldn't make a fool of herself. Dhanurveda was still in his blood and in his bones. Sara's lifetime of memories learning the bow was as with him as Marie's magic was with him. Once he trained his muscles to work the way he knew they should, after a lifetime of using a crossbow and now realizing what a travesty that weapon was as compared to either a short or longbow, he was teaching Jess how to hit a bull's eye before Christmas.

Harvey wanted to be bothered with nothing but baseball, baseball, and more _baseball_. Nearly every day was spent in the yard throwing the ball around. He joined his local little league and Dean was made assistant coach.

Penny however didn't take to outside sports. Penelope loved _puzzles_. All kinds of puzzles. Crosswords, sliding tiles, Rubik's Cubes, but most of all jigsaw puzzles. There wasn't floor space for all of them so she moved into her own room and the walls were made into canvases. Dean whipped out his inner carpenter and after the first few splinters and curses, frames started to go up. When the supply of puzzles she hadn't yet worked dwindled to nothing, Harry, coming out of his coding daze long enough to recognize something he could help with, decided to make a little something to tide her over.

Setting Penny up at the family computer, he showed her a jigsaw game he'd developed where a choice of shapes was split into pieces and she could reassemble them. That pleased her to no end. It was in the following spring, at five years old, that she surprised everyone but Dean by developing a rudimentary sequel to her favorite game by digitizing new, more complex shapes for the game world.

It was then, in that instant, that Harold Specter realized how much he'd been overlooking that first year they'd lived in San Francisco. How could he not notice that not only was Penny apparently a computer genius, but Harve was his team's MVP and Jess could shoot the O from the Cola in Coca Cola from fifty feet.

"The rest I get. They're good and they work hard, but Penny? Even a prodigy needs guidance," Harry said to Kathy one night they both came in after bedtime. Dean had left dinner covered in the oven and Kathy knew he would be in the attic acting as dispatcher until after midnight.

"Guidance?" Kathy asked. "Oh, God, the polenta is amazing."

"I knew this didn't taste like mashed potatoes," he said, teasing her. "Dean? No, he's practically a Luddite."

"She _does _go to school now, Harry."

"That must be an _excellent _school."

"It better be. It costs a fortune," she said, laughing.

Harold was astonished and grateful. The kids were alright. _More _than alright. Their cobbled together family was just about perfect. That Christmas Harry got Penny her own machine and a book on coding that was just kid-friendly enough to keep her attention. Penelope Maria Garcia had the best Christmas ever! By New Year's of 1983 it felt like life couldn't get any better.

* * *

Dean dreaded the countdown to midnight leading into that New Year. Nearly every part of him was glad to know his little brother was on his way but that was shaded with the knowledge of what the rest of the year would bring and how it would end.

1983 would be a wonderful, terrible time for the family Winchester.

"What's wrong?" Kathy asked as the kids fought to keep their eyes open watching the festivities on TV. Twelve was not an hour they were used to. Dean was insistent on the health benefits of a good night's sleep.

"Wrong?" He asked. He tried to fix his face but he'd lived under the same roof with Kathy for almost three years. She could read him almost as well as Missouri could.

"Come on," she said, leading him out of the family room where Harry and the kids were nursing sparkling cider and wishing they lived in New York so they could be in bed already. "What is it?"

He'd have to lie and lie well. The best fabrications were truths. It seemed circular but it was a fact. You could lie better with the truth than with a lie. He would have to tell her something real, something he honestly felt down to his core to shake her attention from what he was feeling at the moment about his mom.

"Well, now that you know my mom is pregnant—"

"And has finally agreed on having a shower, thank God. I knew she couldn't abstain twice in a row," Kathy rejoiced. Dean exhaled. "Sorry. Excited. Continue."

"Now that you know," he repeated. "It's not a spoiler to tell you that I miss him." He let that settle in. Kathy sobered. "I've got twenty seven years to go. His whole lifetime, you know?" Dean didn't expect going down this road would dig up legitimate feelings but he had to control his breathing not to let the memories of Sam shake him apart. He'd lived through a forty year stretch without his brother and that part of his heart now had a lock on it that he could open and shut at will. It might seem to be a strange thing to consider but it had been a survival mechanism he'd developed in Hell. It had been the only way he'd been able to survive at Lisa's for three months without going insane: he had to close down the parts of him that ached for Sam.

"I didn't even think about it like that. Oh, Dean I'm so sorry," she said as she took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"It's okay. Just memories, you know? And then there's Cas—" Dean also didn't expect those feelings to bubble up under his words but the moment he said Cas' name they pushed against his heart. That part of him had no lock; he hadn't had to create one.

In that flickering instant he remembered a girl clinging to her guardian angel the morning after she'd been ripped apart, the morning after she'd been broken down to practically nothing. She remembered that angel holding her so tight, completely understanding that in that moment she needed a rock to lean against. For all the things Cas didn't understand about the human experience it said a lot that he understood that.

Dean hadn't ever told Kathy about Cas. He generally kept a tight lid on the people and events of the future. She hadn't been told much about Spencer beyond what he'd revealed for the baby shower. When his mom called Kathy to tell her she was pregnant with Sam, Dean only revealed his name and broad interests. He never had an opportunity to discuss Castiel with her and the prospect of explaining an angel to her wasn't something he could visualize doing. The time travel he had allowed her to associate with his own innate abilities, only explaining something had gone wrong to stick him in the past but also allowing the hand of fate had deemed it necessary. How could he go into angels and Heaven and being on a first name basis with God who was also the potato to his bud? It was odd enough without bringing in all the baggage. He hadn't even told her about Jess's resemblance to Marie and what it could mean.

"Cas?" She asked. "Cassie?"

That made him laugh and the melancholy dropped a little away from him. "Nah, Cassie was the name of my first girlfriend. Cas is . . . well, my friend. He's—"

"Oh, _he_."

"Yeah. He's like, I guess . . . I don't know." Wow. How could he define Cas? Weird. Who was Cas to him? More than just a friend, right?

"Best friend?"

"Other than my brother and Spencer?"

"It's different with family. If you had a good relationship growing up, _best friends _is just the default position. It doesn't even really need to be defined, you know?"

"I guess?"

"It's like, absorbing someone else into the fold is a different dynamic. I mean, Mary's my best friend, she's my best buddy, but we grew up together, we knew each other's secrets before they became secrets. Family's like an extension of yourself. Like with Harry, in the beginning it was different. I had to actually choose to trust him; it didn't just come with the relationship. We had to get to know one another and trust one another. Disappointments feel bigger and it's harder work to forgive shortcomings but once you get there its . . . _perfect_. It becomes that relationship you recognize having with your family. That person _becomes _family."

"Best friend," he said, thinking over the phrase. A person who wasn't family, who he hadn't grown up with as family, who he had absorbed into his circle? "Yeah. Cas is my best friend. He's like a little brother and a big brother rolled into one. He's socially awkward, deadly shy, completely lost _all the time_, but then he's always saving my ass."

"Dean, you just described Lennie from _Of Mice And Men_," she said with a smile.

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

She laughed, rolling her eyes at him. Shouts of 'Happy New Year!' rang through the house.

Dean poked her towards the family room. "Go on. Kiss him."

"Shut up," she said, poking him right back.

"Need mistletoe this time?" He asked. A week earlier, an encounter under a sprig of mistletoe at the family Christmas party caused a stilted kiss on the cheek between Harry and Kathy. What made it notable was that for the last few Christmases, the friendly pecks weren't half so awkward. The kids all 'ooohhed.'

Dave, who had spent the holiday with them, suggested a do over that earned him the Katherine Pearson evil-eye. Marc, who had finally gotten back onto speaking terms with his brother if not with Kathy, had also been in attendance. He seconded Dave's suggestion but Dean had to block Kathy's evil-eye with neutralizing magic as she nearly covered Marc's entire body with shingles. Dave and Marc's dates didn't get the joke as they assumed, as almost everyone did, that Kathy and Harry were already a couple. Dave's date, Carolyn, thought the entire thing was 'adorable.' The only stranger at the party who accurately read their relationship was Dave's partner and friend at the BSU, Jason Gideon.

Dean had been familiar with Jason's name for years through Spencer in his own timeline and he saw in him the same thing that affected Hill over a hundred years ago: Jason Gideon was an empath. Dave explained to Dean that Jason didn't really understand his ability and took it for granted that other people felt evil in the same tactile way he felt it. It made him excellent at his job but it also stretched him emotionally thin. Dave was afraid the job would break Jason down if he wasn't careful. It was one of the reasons he invited him to spend their Christmas furlough in California, away from murder and insanity.

Taking a moment's stock of Kathy and Harry, Jason declared with a characteristic shrug, "Don't think about it in those terms." The only people who even began to understand him were the two people under the mistletoe.

Kathy looked to Dean as New Year's welcomed them and she said in a playful, childlike voice, "Who's turning four in a few weeks? My baby Dean's turning four in a few weeks!"

"Kathy—"

"Who's my little man? Who's my little—"

Dean escaped to the family room and she couldn't stop laughing.

* * *

"Daddy?" Penny called to him one day in March. He was out in the garden harvesting butternut squash for a soup he planned on making for dinner. Standing on the back porch, Penny stood with her homework composition notebook in one hand and with her other hand she rubbed her eyes. "My head hurts."

"Really?" He said, peeling off his gloves and dropping them into his basket. Penny didn't complain about much unless she was in serious distress. It was a challenge for Dean to make sure she was okay because she was usually bouncing around so much that even when she had the flu last September she kept insisting she was fine so she wouldn't have to stay in her room and rest. He went to her and crouched down. "Where's it hurt?"

"Here," she pointed to her eyes and then her forehead. "Everything's blurrier."

"_Blurrier_? It was blurry before?" She looked like she had just confessed to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby. "Penny?"

"It wasn't _bad _before."

"How long?

". . . since Turkey Day it was a _little_ bad. Now it's _really _bad," she said with a big frown.

"November? Penny—" he said, putting his hand on her head and stroking her hair. She started crying. Dean pulled her close. "It's okay. Let's go get it checked out." She nodded, tears falling off her chin. He wiped her face and kissed her forehead. "Put on your sweater." Nodding, she turned and went back into the house. Dean sighed. He remembered the photo of her from her FBI personnel file and recalled the pair of 50's-styled glasses that framed her face. It answered his question on whether they were a fashion choice or prescriptions.

He turned to the half-tilled garden and waved a hand. The squash uprooted themselves and dropped into his harvest basket. He waved to himself and the basket went to him.

"Harve? Jess?" Dean called. Going into the house on that Wednesday afternoon, he dropped the basket to the counter and washed his hands.

"Yeah?" Harvey called from the living room.

"Yeah?" Jessica called from her bedroom.

"We're going out. I've gotta take Penny to the doctor."

"Is she okay?" Harvey asked, coming into the kitchen. Dean heard Jess's door open and heard her walking across the hall to Penny's bedroom.

"I think she might need glasses," Dean said. He pictured Spencer in his glasses. The kid loved the classic black wayfarer frames but Dean had a feeling that Penny's choice would be a completely different definition of 'retro' than Spencer's. It was strange that they were two incarnations separated from their sibling connection and raised in separate places but both essentially had the same style. Penny loved the fifties and 'twirly skirts' as she called them. As she got older Dean imagined she'd graduate to pencil skirts. She added color to everything vintage and wouldn't wear anything she saw on television unless the show was in black and white. Spencer mostly dressed as if he were just _stuck _in the fifties . . .

"Do they make glasses with glitter?" Harvey asked with a grin.

"I'd say you were a wise guy if I wasn't hoping they do." Dean gestured out the kitchen. "It's chilly. Get a sweater."

Harvey heaved a sigh and went out groaning, "Okay, _mom_."

"Yeah, yeah, but when was the last time you got a cold?" Dean asked. He wrote a note for Kathy and Harry just in case, though that was never likely, that they would be home before they returned.

* * *

"Oh my gosh," Jess said, blinking behind Penny's new glittery hot pink kitten-framed glasses. "You can see with these on?" She asked, handing them back to Penny.

"Why?" Penny asked, slipping them on her face and looking like she was viewing the world from under water. She blinked.

Dean, Harvey, and Jessica looked to one another.

"It's so . . . shiny . . ." Jess said lamely.

"Glare," Harvey said.

"Blingy," Dean nodded in agreement. The three of them looked at him, frowning. "What? It'll be a word."

Penny put her hands on her little hips and singsonged, "Diamonds are a girl's best friend."

"Okay, Norma Jeane," Dean said.

Something passed over Penny's face just then and Dean realized he'd just opened up a drawer that had been closed for nearly three years.

"Johnny . . ." she whispered. Penny would often dream about that other little person who was just like her. Her memory would present the other as a mirror image of herself. Penny went to Dean and she leaned against his leg. "I miss Johnny."

Harve and Jess glanced to one another, then to Penny, then up to Dean for explanation.

"You'll see her again," he promised. He knew he could say that without feeling like he was lying. She would meet Johnny again one day. Of course she wouldn't know that her boy genius teammate Spencer Reid would be her sister Johnny but when all was said and done and there was no more threat to her from that which wanted to destroy their world, Dean would tell her the truth. All of it.

"Who's Johnny?" Jess asked.

"My friend," Penny said before he could come up with something convincing. She had said it clearly, honestly, and she was lying. Dean sighed and accepted that he'd taught by example. His little girl was learning to hide the truth in well-placed fabrications.

"What are we getting for dinner?" He asked.

* * *

Another family reunion, this time in Lawrence, Kansas. The weekend after Easter the Campbells and le Blancs joined up to celebrate the impending birth of Mary and John's second child. She would be Samantha or he would be Samuel and either way, Sammy was going to be a beautiful, happy baby.

There was less debauchery at this baby shower as the last was Diana Reid's own personal version of a grand sendoff. Now that she was the mother of an eighteen month old she knew all her fears had been correct and she vowed to never have another, though she would always admit that the one she had was absolutely perfect but likely couldn't be improved upon.

Early April in Kansas wasn't September in Nevada but despite persistent rain clouds, that Saturday remained dry and Mike and John worked the grill like two pros. Missy told Kate to focus on rounding up the kids as she deputized Dean to work the kitchen with her instead.

Penny played big sister to baby Dean even though he was four now and proud of it and she watched over Spencer like a hen over her chick. Harvey and Jess hung out with a few older kids who hadn't been able to go to Diana's shower.

The event was DJ'd by Harry who instantly received the respect of his adopted family by exhibiting his excellent taste in music. Dave introduced Carolyn to the family as his fiancée and another celebratory cheer rang through the party.

Grandpa Joe Winchester was conspicuously absent. John explained it as his dad being hit with a bad flu. Dean wondered if Michael was planning his exit before the events of November. Dean didn't have any memories of his grandfather so he knew Michael checked out before Mary died, not after. He wasn't sure what he felt about the impending abandonment but he knew his dad had been raised by Joe, had considered Joe his father; he was the only parent he had. To John, Michael was the only person he'd ever known in that role and now he was setting him up to what? Suffer through two funerals in one year? That was bullshit. That was some serious bullshit. It was no wonder his dad became a recluse.

"What is that?" Missy pulled Dean out of his thoughts as she hovered over a simmering pot of something delicious. Dean had set a wooden spoon to self-spin and it hovered and turned in the pot on its own as he chopped chives.

"Like it?"

"I wanna swim in it," she declared.

"Here," he said gesturing to the fridge where a pen started to write on a notepad the recipe for Fish and Corn Chowder.

"I wish I knew how to do that," she said, looking around the kitchen to the automation.

"And I wish I could read minds. Greener grass."

She granted him that. "Yep."

Kathy poked her head in the kitchen. "Annabel is looking for Christian—"

Missy pointed to her without looking up from the carrots she was chopping, "Wasp nest over at the neighbor's yard." Kathy looked panicked and turned to go when Missy shrugged and said, "Oops. Too late." A sudden, loud screaming could be heard outside.

"Missy!" Kathy chastised, knowing Missouri had seen it happen with enough time to stop it.

"_Those who don't listen, feel_."

Kathy couldn't help a guilty grin. "Should we attribute that pearl of wisdom to Confucius?" She asked, already knowing the answer.

"Try my mama before she whooped my ass."

"Mine too." Kathy looked to Dean as if expecting him to have shared in the moment. It took a second for Dean to realize what she was asking but though he had a few examples like that from his dad he had none from his mom.

"I wasn't trouble," he said looking playfully indignant at the suggestion but hoping they wouldn't hover over the topic. He gestured to the door leading to the living room. "Go and look. Angel. Certified."

"Mmmhmm," Kathy hummed, smiling. "We are gonna need a gallon of calamine lotion," she groaned, heading back out of the kitchen and following the pained shouts of Christian Campbell.

* * *

The decompression of the day happened that night once everyone was asleep. With the house he grew up in so still and quiet after having so much life and activity was like existing in a dream and waking up in another. It was exactly as his few threads of memory had recalled it. He even recalled vague impressions of that party from when he was a child. He wasn't sure if the tall sparkly girl was a real memory or a figment but he smiled, pretty sure it was real.

Most of the family lived in Lawrence so the only overnighters were his set, David and Carolyn, and Diana, Bill, and Spencer. Even at eighteen months it was clear the kid was a genius. He was reading, talking clearly. Dean wondered how much of this future Spencer would remember. Would he recall Penelope if he knew it was her he'd been interacting with all that time? Maybe not. Hadn't Spencer said most of what he recalled were things he read?

Rising from his spot on the couch where Penny was lying across him, drooling on his shirt, he repositioned her and stepped away.

He looked around, finally able to take it all in. He was home and it wasn't a dream or a nightmare. That was saying a lot as Dean's reality had always been some version of one and never the other. There were pictures in the wall unit and on the walls depicting events he didn't remember. The whole house smelled like the incense his mother used to burn. Floral and fruity with just a little power behind it, he knew now, to keep things away.

He went to the foot of the stairs and looked up to where the nursery was still in progress. Just over six months from now . . .

A cool spring breeze hit his face. He was through the backdoor and out into the yard before he could tell his legs to escape. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and shook as he fought to breathe. He couldn't do this. He couldn't just let her go to her death. She deserved more from life and a hell of a lot more from him. He had tried and failed twice to save her. Was the third time supposed to be a charm or what causes her to walk into Sam's nursery? He felt sick. No matter what, in his heart, no matter his choice in this situation, it would ruin her.

He leaned back against the wall and looked up to the sky wanting to drown himself in the grey cloud cover.

"Dean?" Her voice called to him.

He was startled but hid it as best he could as he straightened up and looked over to her. She was in the same long white gauzy nightgown she wore when she died, only now her stomach was eight months along with Sam. She wore fuzzy pink slippers. He laughed just a little when he saw those. He'd forgotten all about them.

"What?" She said with a grin looking down to her slippers but being obstructed by her belly.

"Big bird's girlfriend," he said which was such an odd thing to say much less blurt out that he immediately chastised himself.

Mary looked astonished. "Dean calls them that. He loves Big Bird."

"Penny too," he said, hoping that covered him.

"That's so funny. Can't sleep either?"

"It'll come. Fresh air clears my head."

She pointed up to the sky, "But no stars. What's a girl supposed to do without any constellations?"

The tension and pressure behind his eyes wouldn't relent. "Constellations?"

"Don't you think they're a great way to just jumble all the other stuff out? John thinks it's weird but heck; he sleeps the second his head hits anything resembling a pillow. Funny how civilians train their fighters, don't you think? Hunters know the dangers of sleeping too fast and too easy." She gestured to the house behind him. "I stay up like a half hour before I can fall asleep. I can hear everything that happens in the whole house. Once heard a mouse running around in the basement."

"From your room?" He asked, astonished.

"Yep. You know, _things _don't have a lot of patience so you just pretend to sleep and if a boogey tries something, you can jump on it."

Damn. How do you tell the woman protecting her cubs to protect her cubs less? Could he if he heard something in Penny's bedroom, even knowing how it would all go down for him if he did?

"What?" She asked. He didn't say anything. His voice wasn't working just then. "You know what's funny? Every time you see me, it's like you're looking at an old friend from a long time ago but I can't even call you out on it because every time I see you it feels the same. Weird, right?" She shrugged. "Maybe we knew each other in a past life."

"What are you clearing your head about?" He asked wanting desperately to have a new topic of conversation.

"Other than the watermelon kicking around in there?" She asked touching her belly.

He could tell she was both lying and telling the truth. She knew all his tricks. It was like she invented them. He knew that look in her face because it was his own; it was exactly what he put on whenever he was absolutely, to his core, _terrified_. She was scared.

He felt an overwhelming need to just hug her. It amazed him both with how strong the sentiment was and how, in the last two visits to the past he'd never felt it before. Each time he distanced himself from those kinds of emotions because that's just who he had to be so he didn't fall apart. He had to face his mother as a _client_ and her life as a _case _and that distance, that analytical distance . . . had it ever helped?

"I know you're scared," he admitted very quietly. They came from a line of witches and psychics. He didn't have to give up the farm to say that to her, right?

She hesitated and he could see her debate on whether to raise her shields or to trust him. She was so tired of being strong all the time and he was the first person who had ever said that to her, who saw that in her. Diana was tearing through every book available trying to save her baby sister but Diana Reid was the kind of person who blocked fear, who denied it in herself and was blind to it in others. She was just so driven that Mary had to wear a mask to simply exist near her. It was the same mask she'd worn with her dad. Samuel Campbell died thinking his daughter Annie was his polar opposite. They didn't ever realize they were the same people.

Mary gestured to the bench she was sitting on and he sat next to her. She turned to him in the dim porch lights. Every time she took a good look at him there was just something about him she couldn't place. Was it his eyes? Probably. Just something so familiar . . .

"Why do you think that?" She asked, drawing him out. She needed somebody to talk to and even the man she'd only met twice so far would do. She just had to answer for herself if she could trust him.

"I don't think it, I know it," he said. He was stretching this very thin and very far.

"Know, or you can tell?" She smiled. She was getting cold feet. Her defenses were rising.

Dean took her hand. Her smile was gone. She looked like a child, scared and alone. He did what he felt he should have done a long time ago. Instead of going back and warning her of the future, making her dread and fear it more, he should have at least tried to take the fear away.

"I made a deal once, a long time ago. It was to save my brother. See, I promised I'd always take care of him and I felt that I had to. He was my responsibility. I gave up my soul to save him and they gave me a year."

"One year?" She asked, color fading from her face.

"I spent that year trying to figure things out, trying to fix what I'd done—but I couldn't. There's no going quietly and I was scared. My brother, he tried everything but it wouldn't help. I sometimes wish I'd spent that year differently. Making better memories."

"But you're right here—"

"I died. The debt was collected. I spent a long time wishing I had good things to hold onto but everything I had was _the job_. None of that helped when I was down there. It didn't make me stronger." He looked down to her hand in his. The tiny, cotton-white bells of Lilies of the Valley were twined about their palms and down their wrists. He saw that this frightened her but she didn't pull away. She stared at him, perfectly frozen in shock.

"Your eyes—"

Dean blinked and looked away, the flowers releasing them and falling to the bench in between.

She took the flowers up and blankly looked them over to see if they were real. How could they be real? "I know . . . I know I should scream," she said. The color of the flower buds blended into the lightness of her nightgown. "But I'm so tired." She looked up to him with tears in her eyes. "And it doesn't matter anymore, does it? It'll be ten years next month. That's when they died, when I made the deal. He's coming for my baby isn't he? And I can't stop it, can I? It's my fault and I'm so sorry." She fell against his shoulder. Dean wrapped his arms around his mother and just let her get it all out.

"This isn't your fault," he said. They were words that should have been said a lifetime ago. She'd been carrying too much, more than anyone he knew. In one night she'd lost her mother, her father, and the man she loved only to be faced with an impossible decision. It was always a decision she would have to make, ordained by those pulling the strings in their lives.

Once her tears stopped and she wiped her eyes he said to her, "Don't worry about Sammy. He'll be okay."

She laughed a little. "Now you can tell Sammy'll be a boy?" She looked to the flowers in her hands. "Well, I guess you can." She looked up to him. "But how can you promise he'll be okay?"

"Daddy?" They looked around to see Penny by the backdoor. She was swaying from side to side a little. She waved to Mary. "Hi Auntie Mary."

"What are you doing up?" Dean asked her. Penny took that as an invitation to go over to them and take the seat on the bench between them.

"You were missing," she said very matter-of-factly. "I came to find you."

"And here I am. You should work for the FBI," he said, only partially teasing.

"What are _you _doing up?" She reversed the question to them both.

"Stalking squirrels," he said. She giggled at that. She looked to Mary.

"Oh, baby won't sleep," she said.

"Oh, oh, I know. I know what to do," Penny curled up against Mary and with small fingers lightly touched her tummy. "Daddy says his mommy used to sing this to him when he was little. When I'm sick he sings it for me and it makes me feel better."

"Really? Then I think it should work like a charm," Mary said, stroking the little girl's hair.

Dean felt that hole open up again but he couldn't do anything about it. His daughter and his mother were sharing a moment he felt he had no right to interrupt despite the emotions being triggered inside of him.

"Hey, Jude, don't make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better. Remember to let her into your heart, then you can start to make it better . . ."

Mary Winchester laughed a little to herself. How odd that Dean should sing 'Hey, Jude' to his little girl. She thought she was the only one who did that. But . . . that was so strange. The song came out in, what? '68? That was fifteen years ago. There was no chance Dean's mother could have sung that song to him when he was little. She looked over to him and the way he looked at them, the sadness in his eyes—his eyes.

"Oh my God—" she whispered. Dean?

"Hey, Jude, don't be afraid. You were made to go out and get her. The minute you let her under your skin, then you begin to make it better," Penny continued to gently sing.

Dean saw the recognition in her face and he didn't deny it. He was tired too. He was tired of her death overshadowing everything in his life when her life was so much more vibrant and beautiful than any he'd known. She was a person much more than the icon he'd avenged and mourned and it was _this person_, the person sitting next to him, that he wanted to remember.

"And anytime you feel the pain, hey, Jude, refrain. Don't carry the world upon your shoulder, for well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder."

With a fevered intensity, Mary clutched his hand, the one that rested against the back of the bench and he held her too, both making sure not to disturb Penny who was starting to drift off. He lifted her hand to his forehead and he leaned against it in a gesture he used to do when he was little.

"Hey, Jude, don't let me down. You have found her, now go and get her. Remember to let her into your heart, then you can start to make it better . . ." Penny sighed before getting to her favorite part and was fast asleep.

They didn't know what to say and so they said nothing at all.

* * *

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	26. Schrödinger and Closing Paradoxes

**Chapter Twenty Six**

**Schrödinger and Closing Paradoxes**

"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets:

I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill."

-Matthew 5:17

.

.

.

He hid nothing except that one thing. He kept nothing from her but that solitary thing. He fully acknowledged that she had every right to it but it wasn't his to say without her specifically asking him for it. With everything else he laid it all bare and gave the choice to her. It was the first step that would potentially lead to the other. He told her everything. It was her life, not his, not Heaven's, and not Hell's. It was her decision to make and her path to take. He knew how it all worked; he knew that though events changed, history didn't. In terms of events, only through his own perspective were things 'changing' since it was both established history to him but also his future. His own actions weren't written. He could do anything according to his own freewill but somehow, in half a year, she would die. So his choice was to tell her everything. To not only prepare her but to give her what she would otherwise never have: the story of her children.

He had placed Penelope back onto the couch to sleep and up 'til well past dawn he and his mother sat under steel grey cloud cover talking about the future. She only asked him questions when he skipped over certain elements of his and his brother's life that may have seemed trivial to him but meant _everything _to her: graduations, first accomplishments, first loves. She drew energy from those memories and she held his hands through the other more difficult ones. All that her children had been through, survived through . . . it disturbed her. It made her yearn for them but covenants were unbreakable. Unshakable. They both knew that. Dean had spent a year trying to break his, she had spent ten. The Archangel Michael hadn't even been able to destroy Lucifer because he was protected in the flesh of a Campbell due to a covenant. There had been a quid pro quo established, a contract sealed with souls. In the end, no matter how far or how fast Mary ran, Azazel would find her and have complete access to her home and her child. That had been her promise. In the end, she understood that her ultimate choice wasn't whether to hide from her deal but rather whether she could passively go along with it. It was the choice to go into the nursery or not. It was to consciously allow a demon to share the same space as her son.

While the sun rose the world regained its color as the argument distilled to that single salient point. Mary asked one of the questions he dreaded but not yet the one he was anticipating. "Can the future even be changed?"

"It's not the future for you," he said but he saw that she knew he had just inartfully avoided the question.

"It is for you, though, isn't it? It's your whole life. If this changes, so does your life—"

"You can't look at it like—"

"That's not what I mean and you know it." She reached over and touched the side of his face. "Dean, if I could stop half of what you boys have been through I would in a _heartbeat_. There wouldn't be a question. I'd pack this house up and barricade all of us under a Devil's Trap in Siberia if that's what could do it, but if you change this then this," she gestured around them, "it never happens. Your life never happens the way it does and you don't come back here to warn me because you won't have any reason to. It can't work that way, can it? If I don't die, how can you come back to save me?" He said nothing. He couldn't say anything. The paradox would be blown wide open. It just wouldn't be allowed.

She nodded and took a deep breath. "So I guess the only question left is would you let him alone with Penny? Even if it meant you knew he'd kill you?"

His first and only answer could only and ever be, "Then he'd have to kill me."

His mom had dug down to the entire framework of time travel and she'd established its major barrier. History _didn't _change; only lessons were learned. What was the lesson here? Dean had imagined what it was. His purpose in being there, for that point in time, for finding Kathy that first day in Valencia and through her, being absorbed into the family he never knew he belonged to was for this night, this moment. He didn't come to change Mary's future but to give it to her, without fear.

"I know what you haven't said, Dean." She wasn't accusing him and she didn't seem disappointed but her words threw him off center. He looked to her and she shook her head ever so slightly. She didn't want it. She didn't want it and he was grateful. There were certain things people should never know and the day of their death was the main one. He knew that on a personal level.

Mary Winchester _would _die on November 2, 1983.

When this began, he had quickly weighed the pros and cons of just passing on that sort of information to someone who didn't know the kinds of effects possessing the date of one's own death did to the mind. Without it, would she fear the nursery each time she went into it? Would she treat every single day with apprehension and dread as if it were her last? On the other side, would everyday feel like a ticking countdown to some terrible end? Would anticipation ruin her ability to live?

Dispensing that knowledge couldn't be his choice. An informed receipt or refusal of the knowing had to be hers. She had to decide, since she was already prepared to go into the nursery, how she wanted all those days leading up to that night to pass.

"I don't know how much but I know I have time," she said. She turned to look towards the sky. The storm clouds had burned away under the early morning sun. The ceiling above was clear and blank as if waiting. "I've got ten years of this twisting fear behind me. I ticked off each one sick to my stomach, afraid of what was gonna happen. I don't want that to be my every day. I just wanna live this year, however much of it I've got left without knowing when the bottom'll fall out. I'm just so glad to know he'll be okay." She settled her gaze on Dean and gave him a comforting smile. "And you. I know you don't feel it, but you are. Dean, you're okay."

He shook his head, tears collecting in his eyes. "I'm not."

She pulled him into a tight hug and nodded, "Oh, sweetheart you are." Mary knew she was being given something greater than she had ever been able to wish for. In a decade of fear and doubt and blame it was more than she felt she deserved. She looked into the absolute abyss that her deal had thrown her family into; she saw the horrors her children would live and die through. She felt their pain and understood that if Dean, the recipient of the brunt of it, could come out of a lifetime of the job and then forty years of Hell and torture and violence and abuse and somehow sit across from her now able to extend and express so much humanity then she knew he was fine. His heart, though carefully taped together, would hold. Penny was a testament to the existence of that humanity. Mary also knew that, as an extension, Sam would be okay because Dean was okay. He had promised to take care of him and he had.

"I love you."

* * *

On November 2, 1983, Dean sat in his attic office halfway down a bottle of a ten year old scotch. The phone was plugged out from the jack and the fax was off. He took and gave no work that night.

He hadn't really been thinking of much, he just allowed his eyes to scan over her letters that were spread out all along the attic floor. He wrote to her everyday in a habit he'd learned from Spencer, and she replied to him everyday. For six months they exchanged life information, dreams, fears, stories about the kids, recipes, gardening tips, all sorts of stuff. Dean's first day at pre-k, Sam's first giggle, John's first major client: the local cab company. Those were the longer letters she sent. The shorter ones were simply testaments to waking up one more day and a promise to spend that day with her children imparting love and happiness on them in every way.

To Dean, it was in those last six months that she became that greater than life being he had remembered. His entire life he had wondered if it was just grief that polished her to gold in his memory but no, it was her. The arguments he had remembered his parents engaging in had vanished in those last six months and he had never questioned why. John may have come home upset, angry, or depressed but his wife didn't engage him. She had the patience of a saint and though another kind of man would have likely pushed and prodded just to make himself feel better by taking away the resolute calm of his partner, John's anger dissipated when faced with Mary's unshakable good mood. It was in those months that Cupid meant jack shit because John Winchester genuinely loved, adored, and respected his wife. In those six months his attachment to her became a bond that death couldn't sever.

Some men lose their wives, even to unspeakable violence, but they move on as best they could. Mary became his absolute everything. There would be no moving on for John. No one would be his Mary to him ever again.

"I wish," she wrote in a letter dated from September, "I'd lived this way instead these last ten years. Can you imagine all the memories I'd have?"

Dean kept that letter with him at all times as a reminder.

The downstairs phone rang just after three am and he knew what would come next. He blearily looked to the nearly empty bottle and he capped it. Wiping his eyes he combed back his hair with his fingers and scratched at the two day old beard on his jaw. He'd stopped cutting his hair back in May and it was just shaggy enough to look like a style. He hadn't shaved since Halloween.

There were frantic footfalls downstairs and he heard his bedroom door opened. Nothing. Someone started to quickly climb the staircase up to his office.

His hands were shaking.

"Dean?" Kathy called before opening the attic door. She wore the look of a woman in shock. Her thoughts had been jumbled since receiving John's call from the refuge of Bill and Kate's. Until she saw him sitting there in the center of a lake of paper she wondered how she was going to tell him, but when she saw the look on his face, the resignation in his eyes, she knew that he already knew. He had always known.

_He had always known_.

A flash of anger passed through her. All in one second she felt incensed, betrayed, an anger she'd never felt towards another human being. It was a breath later that she remembered the man before her wasn't the man she was seeing. He was a little boy in Kansas who had just watched his mother die.

_Oh, God_. He'd lived with this the entire time? From the day they met he'd already known. Then she realized how shallow that thinking was. He had lived with this his entire life.

Kathy stood there in the doorframe not knowing what could even be said. She had just lost her best friend but he had just lost his mom all over again.

Dean had prepared himself as best he could. His eyes were as dry as they could be. He had promised her to celebrate her life, not focus on her death. It was time to stop mourning. He saw Kathy across from him and understood what it was he had to do. Glancing down to the letters, they drifted up off the ground like snowflakes falling back to the sky. He rose to his feet and steadied himself. He probably shouldn't have drunk so much but the Campbells were highland people and traditions had to be observed. He walked through the nearly two hundred letters as they sorted and assembled and filed away into the box he kept them in. He went to Kathy and looked down to her face. She wanted to cry but he could see she was denying it to herself out of deference to him. Dean extended his arms out to her and that single gesture brought out all her raw emotions from where she'd tried to push them away. She fell into his arms and cried.

The last letter folded into its envelope and dropped into the box. The lid closed over it. The only thing left of Mary Winchester was a beautiful memory.

* * *

It was just after his birthday when he got the call. Late January in the Bay was more foggy than cold but there was a definite chill in the air. 1984 wasn't what Orwell had envisioned but Dean none the less felt that he was being watched. Harry mostly wondered about his change in appearance. Dean was looking more and more like a hippie everyday. Harry had no problem with hippies. Growing up he was the definition of beatnik before the revolution. The main sticking point in that case was . . . this was Dean. Dean was clean shaven military cuts for as long as he knew him. Dean trimmed his hair himself and perpetually looked as if he were on his way to basic training. Now he looked like a blond Jim Morrison with a ginger Barry Gibb beard.

The kids on the other hand loved his new look. Penny took to braiding his hair just for fun and Jess adored when he went to the archery range with her. Their time spent at Golden Gate Park with him looking like Robin Hood always got people to gawk. Harvey just thought he looked like a badass biker even though Harvey had no idea what a badass biker actually looked like outside a television screen. Dean was very careful to keep his grief from them. When he needed someone to talk with he and Kathy were there for one another.

Harry and Kathy went to his mother's funeral. Mary had asked Dean not to. She knew he had already been to it once and she wanted him to take a different memory of her with him this time. The day of her burial, he took the kids on a day trip through the city where they all took rolls and rolls of photos and ate 'til they were stuffed and had all kinds of wild fun while making the best memories of their childhoods. Those photos went into a giant scrapbook that they each decorated and dedicated to one another and to their parents.

When Kathy and Harry returned, the book was presented to them so they too could share in the happiness. That scrapbook was the first of many like it they would build, each subsequent one a reinforcement of their connection, a tie between their bonds. Their family would not be a handful of people simply occupying the same house. This family didn't have monsters and the constant threat of death to fuse their bonds and Dean would not see them become nearly every other family in their neighborhood where time was only spent together when the children were small and then only during holidays once they got older. With Harry and Kathy working to keep the home financially flush, Dean would be the force that made sure the children grew up always knowing that they were loved.

One night in the last week of January, after the kids had gone to bed, Dean was up in his attic perch reviewing the pages of new file work Dave had faxed him that day. Sorting through it all Dean looked to the massive map of the country he kept up on the south wall. Behind the map was a swath of corkboard which allowed him to pin thumbtacks to it. The thumbtacks tracked a) boogey Unsubs and b) hunters he had assigned to particular cases.

There was a case (or cases; Dave wasn't sure) they were currently working that Dave was trying to establish a supernatural connection to. From Teaneck, New Jersey all the way to downtown San Francisco, along the I-80, they were following a series of similar murders that involved vivisection followed by amputation. Local police departments hadn't made the connection since the murders were so spaced out. It was only when Jason had brought it to Dave's attention a few days prior that red flags went up.

"Men, women. Old, young. It doesn't make sense," Jason had said, handing Dave the stack of files.

"You're the wunderkind. How do you expect me to make sense of this?" Dave asked, perusing the crime scene photos. They were gruesome.

Jason shrugged. "Seemed the kind of thing that was right up your alley."

Dave looked up to him and Jason just wore a look of complete understanding before he turned and walked back to his cubicle.

"He said that?" Dean asked, still staring at the map. He had a pretty good idea that the murders they were looking at were perpetrated by the same person and he was sure he was human. The only problem was Dean also knew he wouldn't be captured for almost twenty-five years. Between his time and then, that man would murder so many more people. What did a person do with that kind of information? From his experience traveling through history, Dean knew there was a reason he was working that case with all of that knowledge. Chuck didn't do things by halves. There was a purpose to this. He watched the map hoping it would answer his questions.

"He knows a lot. Feels it. He won't say anything until I do but I don't want him in this. Kid has enough on his head then to be hit with a whole other world of bad guy to deal with," Dave said from his home in Virginia. Dean was amused by how much Dave sounded like himself in relation to Sam when he talked about Gideon. Five years his senior, Dave took Jason under his wing as a battle-tested mentor would to a genius but sensitive student. In a perfect mirror to Derek and Spencer's dynamic, Dave had built up his on-the-field bona fides in the Marines just as Derek had in the Chicago bomb squad whereas Jason joined the bureau right after college just as Spencer had.

"You're seriously underestimating him. I can tell you from dealing with both, human evil is a lot more fucked up and complicated than the non-human kind. Demons I get. People are crazy." Dave chuckled on the other end. On that they could definitely agree. "Jason probably needs to cross paths with some bad guys he doesn't have to get into the heads of, you know? Put things in perspective?" Dean knew it was a leading suggestion. He knew there would come a point where Jason just wouldn't accept the extent of human evil and he'd wash his hands of it all. In the process he'd leave Spencer bare and exposed in a sea of self-doubt and anxiety.

And it all came down to this case. This killer. He would be the impetus of it all.

"That'll work until it doesn't but by then the genie doesn't go back into the bottle."

"Djinn," Dean corrected, placing a thumbtack.

"Huh?"

"Nothin'."

"John called me, finally," Dave said through a yawn, switching gears on the conversation. David Rossi was a master of the non sequitur. It was late on the East Coast and he was tired but when he had something he wanted to say he said it. "Two words that he and the boys were okay. He still won't talk to me. I mean, _really _talk to me, you know?"

Dean felt a sinking guilty feeling every time Dave would bring up his dad. They'd been inseparable until his mom died and Missouri planted those seeds of doubt.

"I don't blame him. Last time he called, the only thing he wanted to know was if it was true. If I knew about the family, what they did, the things they knew about. Damned if I could lie but I keep thinking I should have. He sounded so . . . disappointed? I wanted to tell him it wasn't my secret to say but who says that at that kind of a moment? I'd blame us all too. Family of psychics and nobody knew?" He sighed. "Now I think he's gonna try and figure this out on his own, go after the thing that killed Mary but nobody does that either. He won't know the first place to start. If he doesn't trust any other hunters then he'll be flailing around for a roadmap."

Dean had never gone over any roadblocks in logic since he was secure in the future of his past. "You don't think he can do it?"

"If it was human I'd say he could drop it from the Empire State building no problem, but let's be real. You met him. Do you see John Winchester as a hunter, jumping out at a poltergeist all fully formed and ready for a fight like goddamned Athena? With no one to teach him how to sort fact from fiction, first vampire he tangles up with, he'll try to take 'em down with garlic or a stake through the heart."

Dave's words brought a dawning thought to Dean's understanding. He was right. Poking around lore for facts without having a basis if understanding would have his dad using a King James Bible to do exorcisms. He didn't know Latin and just as Derek hadn't really understood the reasoning behind using Latin as the central hunting tongue, John, like any other civilian, would face the supernatural world from his pre-formed understandings of Hollywood-soaked reality. Hell, a salt circle was so simple that it seemed like a throwaway bit of foolish superstition.

Dave was right to worry. In that light, John Winchester couldn't do this on his own.

Dean heard the even breathing of Dave on the other end. He gave one sharp call to his phone partner. Dave stirred awake long enough to say through another yawn, "talk to ya tomorrow," before hanging up for the night.

Dean put the phone down and his attention was pulled away from the I-80 Killer as he considered Dave's observation. John Winchester would have to apprentice under somebody, it was his only chance. Half the books on lore were fairytale fiction but it was indiscernible from cold hard fact. Without a guide, John was on a suicide mission.

The downstairs phone rang. Dean looked to the clock on his side table. It was nearly 12 am. Neither Kathy nor Harry had come home yet and besides the mini-flash of panic people usually felt when the telephone rang later than usual he figured that if either of them were going to call in they would have used his number. Moving down the attic stairs and onto the third floor landing, he heard the ringing abruptly end. Instead of moving back upstairs Dean could hear muted words from the kitchen.

"Dean?" He heard Harve whisper a few moments later from the foot of the staircase.

"Kid, why aren't you in bed?"

". . . I may or may not have been getting cookies."

Jess had been teaching her little brother all kinds of lawyerly double-speak from her mock trial team. Harve was adding 'allegedly' to nearly everything he said now. At twelve, Harvey Specter was shaping up to being a lawyer who should likely never work on anyone's defense team.

"And now you're gonna make sure you brush your teeth before you go back to bed, right?" He received a grumble for a response. "Who's on the phone?"

"It's Uncle John for Kathy. I told him you were up."

Of course it was. _Of fucking course it was_. Dean looked up to the ceiling, formed a fist and shook it, knowing Chuck was up there feeling like he was winning a Pulitzer for this bullshit.

Dean went down past Harvey who moped on his way up to the bathroom. Going into the kitchen, Dean picked up the phone.

"Hello?" He said, his voice rough and clearly agitated.

"Oh, sorry," John apologized, hearing the tone and associating it as being aimed at him. "I'll call back later—"

"No," Dean said, rushing to make sure John didn't hang up. "Sorry, it's the kid. He's got school tomorrow and instead he's up, ferreting cookies." Dean heard his dad let out a chuff of understanding.

"I can't get Dean to eat a thing all day then at night he's rummaging through the snacks," there was a sad wistfulness in his voice. Dean heard him and immediately identified the man he'd met in the past and not the man Dean had come to know as his father. He wasn't sure why he had ever thought that the kid he had met in '73, the kid who was positively shocked at the mere possibility that Sonny and Cher had broken up, the kid who he had to arm twist out of buying a VW van, wouldn't instantly dissolve away with the only person left standing being the John Winchester of hunting legend. The kid on the other end of the line was a man raising a baby and a four year old, a man who had just lost his wife, his home, and his sense of the world being a logical place.

_Fuck_. Dave was right. This kid wouldn't last a day in their world.

"Do you know when Kathy'll be in?" John asked him.

"Not sure. I can get you her office number?" He offered.

"I don't think this is something I can talk about over a work line."

It was then that Dean understood the topic of conversation John wanted to bring up with Kathy.

"You can talk to me," he offered.

"Oh, I don't . . . it's not . . ."

"John, I'm family too," he said, the implication in his words was clear. It was a confession to knowing exactly what John wanted to ask about.

"You—you know about—"

"As much as anyone else."

"Did you know about Mary? What was gonna happen?"

Without lying and also completely avoiding the truth, Dean took a lawyerly clue from Harvey and said, "I'm not one of the family psychics."

John didn't imagine following up on that. He'd been on the road alone with his kids for three weeks knee deep in Dean's night terrors, Sammy's cries, books four inches thick about monsters he couldn't bring himself to imagine in the flesh . . . he needed help. He needed . . . his heart ached for just a little help.

"I—I can't figure this out on my own. Everybody I talk to on her side of the family either lies about the truth or just flat out tells me to stop trying to figure it out. I don't know where to even start."

"They don't think you've got it in you to do it," Dean said rather flatly. "And right now you don't."

John gripped the receiver tighter in his hand and let those words pass over him. "At least you qualified that with a _right now_. I don't get you people. You act like years of military service means shit—"

"It's not an act," Dean said and for a moment he marveled how much his own voice took on the calm and steady force his dad had been known for. "You learned how to shoot people. If it was that easy to take these things down we wouldn't be hunters. Any yahoo with a gun could get the job done. Understand?"

"I just need to be pointed in the right direction—"

"There's no 'right direction.' And what about your boys? You go out and get yourself killed because you don't know what the fuck you're doing, then what?"

The other end was silent. Almost a minute passed when Dean heard an intake of breath on the line that told him his dad was doing his best to stop himself from crying. He felt like shit. Dean felt like prime Grade A shit but he knew what he had to do now. He knew what Chuck wanted him, _needed_ him to do. He was closing another paradox. John Winchester had gone down in legend as a man who had been chronically resistant to the aid of other hunters. He flat out didn't trust them. On the other side, Dean had seen his father before he entered the world of hunting. He was green and a _complete _civilian. The learning curve was a 90° angle. There was no point A to point B for him because learning how to be a hunter wasn't the same as signing up for a correspondence course and learning how to type.

He would need a guide.

It was only at this solitary space in time that John Winchester both existed as the best hunter that had ever lived and also as the most rookie hunter around. The scale would only tip one way or the other with a single choice that his son, his best pupil, would have to make right then and there.

"Where are you?" Dean asked him.

"I was planning on seeing Kathy tomorrow. We're at a motel outside Berkeley."

"Can you be here in the morning after nine? I'll be back from dropping the kids off by then."

"Are you offering—" John began not knowing if he was hearing that right.

"If you want to really learn about hunting, you're gonna need some undivided attention and Kathy's busy most of the day." Dean took a deep breath and dropped in feet first. "I'll help you on one condition."

"What?"

"Keep it out of whatever journal you've got—"

"How did you—"

"I told you I'm not a psychic but you seem the type to have a diary," he said with an audible smile in his words, hoping it would take the anxiety from the voice on the other end. John laughed and said nothing.

"Yeah, I'm an asshole; I know you're thinking it. Get to bed; I'll see you in the morning."

"Yeah, night, and Dean . . . thank you."

"No problem."

Dean hung up the phone and looked around his quiet kitchen. Did it look differently now? Were things familiar in a different way to him? Had he decorated it this way because he had remembered it this way? He'd never thought about it before but maybe three feet shorter everything would seem like a memory from long ago. He was going to teach his dad everything his dad had taught him. It was nuts. It was ridiculous. It made perfect sense.

Wax on. Wax off.

* * *

_Holy Yehoshua _this was gonna be impossible. That wasn't to say there was anything off with John's hand to hand _in theory _but he was eleven years out of practice. It was 1984 and he was discharged in '73. The interim had been spent as a husband, father, and as a mechanic. He was a young man with old reflexes tempered by a decade of good eating and little reason to do more than a morning run. When Harry and Kathy were at work and with the kids at school, John brought Dean and baby Sammy over to the house from their motel and it was a whole different kind of school being held.

Judo in the backyard, Latin and Greek in the living room, and a Hunter's History in the attic. Kathy gave them full access to her books on lore and whatever was missing in her library Dean supplemented by faxing himself what he needed from the iPad. John made all his notes in the pages of his journal. He tried to cram as much pertinent information onto a single sheet of paper as could physically hold and when there was overflow he would add addendums and random bits just so he could have a filing system that allowed for quick access.

John wanted to learn everything he could as fast as he could fearing that if he and the kids stayed in one spot for too long then trouble would follow.

"It was in Sammy's nursery. That means something and I have to find out what," he said, breathing hard over the soft ground Dean had tilled for their sparring pitch in the backyard. He was practicing his grappling. Dean's hair was tied back in a long ponytail and his beard provided just enough Batman-like cover to prevent his dad, he was sure, from recognizing him for years, if ever. By that hypothetical future, Dean knew John's memory of him would fade enough that the rest could be explained away by family resemblance.

"Of course it means something," Dean said, utilizing his tone of gruff and experienced indifference. His dad had never heard that type of voice from him before he died, it was something Dean had cultivated once he was the only one left to care for Sam, and so he used it as yet another feint, just in case his dad's memory was better than an elephant's. "You already know it though or you wouldn't be here," Dean said as they paced one another in a circle. "You're scared. Scared people arm themselves. It's human nature."

"Yeah, I'm scared," John confessed just before he went in for Dean's waist. Dean easily twisted out of the grip. "But that makes me sane, right?"

"If you weren't scared . . . kid, I would have kicked your ass out a mile back."

John grinned as sweat dripped down his face. It was a chill and misty late February day but their workout had left them feeling like it was late June instead. Little Dean was coloring on the back porch secured underneath a quilt and Sammy was just inside the back door sleeping in a bassinette. The bassinette was a gift from Dean in Sammy's favorite color, sky blue.

He watched his dad with them and he was struck by just how much he not only loved them but was also obsessively possessed with keeping them safe. In the month he had been training John, Dean finally, for first time in his entire life, saw the origins of his dad's obsession. Yes, John loved and remembered Mary and yes, he wanted to avenge her, but that was secondary to the realization that the Yellow-Eyed Demon, as John had called him in lieu of knowing its name, was after Sammy. John would come to train his children to be hunters so they could protect themselves. He hunted Azazel to get to it before it could get to his children. In John's new reality, offense was defense. Dean had always thought John's laser-like focus was revenge. It wasn't. He had done it all for them.

"If it can get in my house, how's ignoring it gonna help?" He had asked that first day they met. "How can I just go back to how things were and pretend it doesn't exist?"

Dean knew it wouldn't help. He knew what the future held for him and Sam and he knew they would be dragged into the life sooner or later. This fight went beyond Azazel and went all the way to God's throne room. There wasn't enough sugar in the world to coat it. The truth was, Dean had much rather he face the future prepared than be thrown into it and have his reality upended like Spencer had.

"You can't," he told him. "White picket dreams are long gone."

Out on the sparring pitch, John faked left then right, finally securing Dean's core in a grab. He pulled to take him down when Dean reclaimed his balance with his back leg. With the thrust of the sudden imbalance in momentum he bent back and to the side, reversing the grip so that it was him holding John and Dean flipped him over onto his back. He stood over his breathless and aching father and said very calmly, "If I wanted you dead right now, you would be." It was a sentence both Dean and Sam were well used to. Living in a paradox forced him to ignore such questions like _chicken or egg_?

"Up. Again," he ordered. As tired, pained, or exhausted he was, John Winchester always got up. He never complained, he never gave up. Dean hadn't felt as proud of someone since Sammy took his first steps.

They squared off once more. A week later John finally took Dean down.

* * *

"Daddy?"

"Yeah?" Dean turned from the stove where he was making dinner. The space smelled of sugar cookies and spice. He was surprised by a large construction paper heart that was covered in sparkles and red foil and childishly romantic doodles of even more hearts.

"Be my Valentine?" Penny said in a declarative voice. Her daddy was always her Valentine; the asking was simply a formality.

Dean held up a finger in a motion of pause. A second passed. Penny seemed curious. Another second passed.

"Daddy—"

"And—" a bell rang. Dean went to the oven and pulled out a tray. He put the tray down on the center island and gestured to Penny. She climbed up on one of the stools and seeing what he was showing her, she gasped and then clapped her hands in excitement. Off to one side was a dish of pink and white icing. To another side was a little dish of pearl-like white nonpareils and various colored sugars. In the center was the tray and on that tray were sugar cookie letters that spelled out, 'I (heart) My Valentine.'

"I get to make them look pretty?" She asked so excited she couldn't contain herself. With a nod of confirmation from him, Penelope Garcia ran to the kitchen sink and stepped up on the little footstool there so she could scrub her hands. This was gonna be perfect!

On her way back to her perch, she hugged him and said, "Mmm, Daddy, I love you!" She hopped back up on the stool and jumped right in to decorating.

"I love you too, Baby Girl," Dean said but she was completely absorbed in the magnificent edible art project of the year. Dean looked to the Valentine she had made for him and he picked it up from the counter. Love and care had gone into it and with love and care he put it up on the refrigerator next to the others. Jessica, Harvey, and Penny had contributed so many to each of their parents throughout the year that the fridge looked like an art display in of itself. Christmas cards, birthday cards, anniversaries. It was a physical display of their family and even though Jess had graduated to Hallmark over macaroni and Harvey was in the transition period to do the same, none lost their spirit.

"Jess?!" Penny called out. "Harvey?! You guys wanna paint cookies?"

"Harvey can't!" Jess called as she could be heard jogging down the stairs. "He just eats the icing."

"Do not," Harvey said, coming in from the living room. "I eat the cookies too."

Dean hummed, "Just not at the same time."

Harvey held up his hand, "I plead the fifth."

With a chuckle, Dean said, "That's my boy."

"Cool," Harvey said in awe, looking at the tray.

Jess entered the kitchen. One sniff of the air and she clapped her hands just as Penny had. Dean made the best sugar cookies.

"Who gets the heart?" Dean asked the three of them.

"Kathy," they all said without a second thought.

Dean snapped his fingers and pointed to them, "You have learned well, young Jedi."

The center island was a sugary mess by the time all the cookies were done but they all thought it was worth it when Harry and Kathy defied the odds and came home before bed just in time to be presented the remaining three cookies: M Y (heart).

* * *

Dress shopping. Kathy was in the middle of closing a major merger and so the procurement of Jessica's Junior Prom dress fell to Dean. Harry was working from home that Saturday and a new game he'd developed for Penny was being thoroughly beta-tested by the youngest Garcia who naturally chose a Tetris predecessor to anything else that could possibly be going on in the universe. Harvey was preparing a final project presentation with his study group at the library.

"Is this stupid?" Jess asked with a frown as she stepped out of a changing room in a poufy, very 80's, salmon-colored taffeta gown. Dean had a horrific flashback to the prom scene in 'Pretty in Pink.' Jess had come to read Dean faster than anyone in the house and his unguarded flick of terror, just passing his eyes for a moment, sent her spinning a 180° back to the changing room.

"Mini-Me—" he began, realizing the blunder.

"Why does everything have to look like Scarlett's wedding dress?" She asked, completely frustrated, from behind the louvered door. Despite the dearth of social commentary, Jess watched 'Gone with the Wind' whenever it was on TV.

"You liked that dress."

"For _Halloween_. I want something . . . I don't know." She poked her head out. "Elegant."

"You're fourteen."

Her head rose as her spine straightened and she declared, "I'm not a baby anymore. I wear these kinds of dresses to church on _Easter_." He had to admit the truth there. "This is prom, not communion."

"What? No gloves? No tiara?"

She smiled and ducked back into the changing room saying, "Maybe gloves but no tiara. Penny will never forgive me."

"You've got two weeks. We'll find something. What's the point of living in the Bay if we can't trick you out?"

"Exactly," she said. Emerging from the changing room in her street clothes she had a multi-colored mountain of satin, crinoline, and taffeta in her hands. The both pondered her selections. "Now I want cupcakes."

Dean raised his hand. "Seconded."

On their way downtown to a boutique recommended by one of Jessica's friends, she saw it from behind a storefront window as they waited for a green light.

"My dress!" She pointed to it. Dean followed her hand to a Salvation Army store window where a gorgeous dark lavender gown was outfitted on a mannequin. It was clearly vintage 1940's where fabric was restricted because it was a sheath but just conservative enough for Dean not to flash full-on Padre-mode on the fourteen year old next to him. It was beaded and embroidered to give a very elegant orchard and vine motif. The dress was everything not available in stores and it was exactly the style for a teenaged Jessica Pearson on her way to Junior Prom.

Dean grinned. Of course it would be the Salvation Army. He even wondered if a lucky black cat would cross their path.

Jess was in love. She practically bounced into the store and then beelined to the dress. Kathy had given Jess a budget that the youngest Pearson declared wasn't enough for a slip much less a prom dress but when she checked the little price tag hanging off the dress she jumped up and down. She looked like she'd hug the mannequin.

"You don't even know if it's your size," Dean observed to her but he had a feeling it would be.

"Don't care," she sighed like Pooh Bear in a jar of honey.

"Oh," the older lady behind the counter said when they requested the dress. "We were sure this one would go fast. We just put it up this morning."

Besides the 'I'm sure you did,' passing through his thoughts, Dean also said to himself, 'Thank you, Chuck.'

As if it were tailored to her body, Jess looked amazing in her gown. "It even smells like lavender," she said to Dean, twirling around by the changing cubicle. "Now I just need shoe—" she stopped speaking before she squealed. She jogged over to a shoe rack covered in buffed up second-hands where she took hold of a pair of satin plum pumps. One inch heels, vintage styling, scuff-free as if they'd never been worn, "please please please," she chanted as she slipped them on. "Yes!" She gasped.

Dean pointed to her, "She shoots—"

"She scores," Jess said, pointing back to him.

With her mom doing her hair, Harry showing her how to dance, and Dean teaching her how to break the bones in someone's hands if they tried to 'get fresh' with her, Jess had a perfect Junior Prom. Circumstances had taken one parent a long time ago but providence stepped in and now she had three she was absolutely grateful for. She wouldn't exchange her life with anyone for anything.

* * *

Jess started high school that fall and Harvey would begin two years later. His preparation for Junior High prom was less involved than his sister's as he had little concern for 'the perfect tux,' and any pair of black patent leather wingtips would do. He did nothing special to his hair but it was Kathy, not his dad, who taught him to dance. Dean told him to keep his hands to himself on threat of spending the summer indoors which effectively meant no baseball. Harve would rather have his hand broken. For a fleeting moment he wondered how Dean would even know if he didn't keep his hands to himself, not that he was planning on doing anything but Harvey Specter had grown to love tempting fate. Fate was one thing though, Dean was another. Dean always knew. Harvey asked him that night of Junior Prom, as he tied his bow tie, how Dean always seemed to know what he was thinking.

"Dude, I was you at your age," Dean said as if it were obvious. Harvey frowned. Was that true? It wasn't ever anything Harvey had considered over the last six years. The Dean he knew was his other dad and his stay-at-home mom rolled into one. He was his big brother. Harvey had never seen himself in that light, as a mentor to someone else as Dean was to him. Penny was different, she wasn't into the things Harvey was into. She liked to be inside with her computer listening to the Bangles. Dean put himself out there to engage in Harvey's extracurriculars since his dad was always at the office. Dean was the PTA member in their house. He was assistant coach for baseball and archery just so he could spend time with Harve and Jess. Dean was everything Harvey was sure he wasn't but there Dean was, saying they were the same. It was weird. Was he on his way, living out a trajectory Dean had set where Harvey might be that person one day? The person other people relied on? The person even one person relied on? He didn't know if he was that guy shaped in that mold but seeing it in a new light, maybe he could be that guy. One day.

Dean handed him a small box. It was prettily decorated and Harvey immediately recognized Penny's handiwork.

"What is it?"

"The corsage. Make it special, open it up for her. It's three special colors of roses." Dean shrugged. "Jess says she'd love it so I've been growing them. Penny put them on a scrunchie so it goes on her wrist, no pins, no crying."

A sudden bright flash blinded them.

"Candids!" Kathy proclaimed from the bedroom door with a camera in hand. The thing looked like it ran on six double D batteries and a diesel motor.

"Ninja!" Dean declared, his eyes burning.

Bringing his arm up to shield his face, Harvey hissed, "Mom!" He hadn't realized what he'd said until he lowered his arm to see the surprise and almost-tears in Kathy's eyes. Dean had somehow ninja'd out of the room.

"I'm sorry," he said, biting his lip.

"Don't apologize. It doesn't look like a happy face but it is."

"It's not weird?" He asked.

"Why would it be weird? Unless it's weird for you—"

"No," he quickly said. His insides were churning. "It's just, I know you and dad still think about, you know, my mom and Jess's dad. I don't want you guys to think we don't care—"

"We? You and Jess talked about this?"

He shrugged. "Kinda. All the time. We figure that's why you guys aren't together."

"Because of your mom and my Wally? Oh, baby," she went to him and hugged him. "Your dad and me . . . we've been real stupid about this." She remembered Jason's words from years ago. They _had _been looking at it all the wrong way.

"You don't mind?" He asked, looking up to her with the most hopeful yet guarded look she's ever seen on him.

"Mind? That you'd call me that? Of course I don't mind."

"You don't think I'm a bad person?"

"Harvey—"

Her tears were now reflected in his eyes. "I never knew her and I know I should feel something but it's always been you, Kathy. Always." He held onto her and she just rubbed his back the way she used to when he was a baby. She thanked the day she went to Chicago on the scant words of an old legend. She knew that old legend was just outside the bedroom door listening to them. Her family had been formed by fate, by a gap in time. All of their happiness was a paradox and she was grateful.

Dean _was_ just outside the bedroom door. His own thoughts fell on his mother. This trip to the past had restored her to him in every possible way. This trip had restored his father to him in the ultimate way. It was then that Dean realized he hadn't been lost in time: he was finding it.

* * *

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	27. Fait Accompli

**Chapter Twenty Seven**

**Fait Accompli**

Neither Harry nor Kathy had gone rusty on the dating scene the fourteen years they'd known each other but no outside relationship had ever been allowed to progress to any sort of real intimacy. They could never admit to one another the truth behind the recurring and self-defeating habit of never taking another person into their lives but they knew the reasons. Both were afraid. They were afraid of losing the life they had together.

In all truth they could continue as the best of friends living in separate bedrooms all their lives and feel completely fulfilled. They cared and loved one another without needing any other bonds between them but the children they shared. It was those children however, when those children started to internalize and question the origins of their parent's separation that forced them to confront the possibility that there was something between them that could possibly be explored. If their love could become passion it would make things so easy. They both acknowledged the inherent weakness in that motivation.

Both were seated on the porch swing under a summer sky. Kathy, as if ironing out the details of a merger, asked Harry out for dinner and a movie. She, like her daughter, had always been a slow-burn kind of person. She was methodical, she made plans, and she organized lasting structures. It was her way.

"We always eat dinner and watch movies," he had observed. Harry was far more impetuous than Kathy, a genetic disposition passed down to his son. He may no longer have been the sixteen year old who ran away from home and crossed the country in the late fifties just to play in a jazz band and he was no longer the social self-exile he once was, but he was still the man who was guided more by what he felt than what he was told he should feel, and the consequences of that made him seem aloof to his own children.

"Not alone," she countered. That was true as every outing had always been a family outing.

"Almost. Maybe not dinner but the kids always sit with Dean up front in the theater."

"Dinner and a movie is a typical first date."

"Kathy, this isn't a typical first date."

"If we organized this based on how well we knew each other we'd be driving to Vegas already."

"Reno's closer and is that a proposal?" He teased. "It's so sudden."

Ignoring him she asked, "How about the museum?"

"We went to the museum yesterday."

"There's more than one museum, Harry."

"And we've been to most if not all of them."

She threw her hands up and mimed a scream. "I'm about to have my assistant call your assistant to work something out."

He sighed. "I don't know about all this. It feels like an unnecessary dance."

"What?" She asked with a laugh. "Us '_getting to know each other_?' I know."

"We know our politics, our beliefs, and our philosophies. The only question between us is—"

She inhaled and nodded. "A pretty big one—"

"I know, but it's more than that because I know I do—" he didn't have to say he loved her because they both knew that was there. Love, friendship, and passion were often mutually exclusive experiences.

"I know," Kathy said. She extended a hand to him and he took it. "The wall is right here. It can't be forced, so all I'm proposing is a slow step forward."

He brought their hands up and lightly kissed the back of hers. She extended a finger and stroked his cheek. "Fourteen years together and the major question was whether sex would complicate things. I have tried to figure out this thing between us but it doesn't make sense. Out of nowhere you show up on the best and worst day of my life and you save me—"

"Harry—"

"I have to say it. Kathy you saved me. You did. I couldn't have survived that night without you. For the longest time I couldn't believe you were even real. You were our angel."

"You were mine," she whispered.

"What?"

"It won't make any sense to you but I only went to Chicago that night because I was running away."

"You said you had a—"

"Internship interview? No. I lied." Her hand trembled in his. "I was in a pretty bad place, Harry. I was alone with Jess and all this pain and pressure hit at once that I just needed to feel like I had a—a purpose."

"Beyond Jess?"

"Realizing that made me feel awful. She needed me and all I'd do all day was cry. I couldn't stop thinking about what she'd lost but would never know. I thought about what our lives were supposed to be and just how quickly the bottom fell out."

"I know."

"Meeting you, you needing someone to understand what it felt like—"

"You spoke my language," he said.

"Being able to not dwell on things . . . it saved me. I know it did."

Harry pulled her close, her back to his chest and he held her. They sat in the quiet afternoon for a while.

"Kathy?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you ever think about the future?"

"All the time," she said with a light laugh.

"When I think about life years from now, when I'm older and the kids are having their own lives, I never see myself alone out here on the porch."

She stroked his arm and settled a little more comfortably against him. "You see us growing old together?"

"You don't?"

"I don't think it'll end any other way," she said. "Where you go, I'll go."

"Then why even play this game? There's nobody out there for me. I don't want anybody else."

"It's not a game, Harry. It's the huge elephant in the room every time we're alone."

"Do you love me?"

"Yes, of course I do."

"Then?"

She turned around to him and took a deep breath before saying, "We've never even properly kissed before."

"And what if we do but there's nothing there, or it's awkward, or a million other things? How does that change the facts?"

"Is that what you're afraid of? That you won't feel anything?" She asked him, successfully shielding her own disappointment.

"Me? No, I'm pretty sure which side of the line I'll fall on," he confessed.

Just as he had five years prior, Harold Specter allowed doubt and insecurity to guide him in his gauging of Katherine Pearson's feelings and devotion. Kathy almost wanted to be mad at him. Instead, she kissed him. Without warning and without prelude, she kissed him. Nearly a decade and a half in the waiting and it was still everything and more either had ever considered.

Three sets of watchful eyes peered out at them from behind the blinds. Jessica, Harvey, and Penelope had clandestinely watched the events transpire.

"What's it mean?" Nine year old Penny asked. She was positioned between Harve and Jess.

Harve looked to Jess. "Reno?"

Having just received her learner's permit, Jess gave a decisive nod and said, "I'll get the keys."

"Slow your roll," Dean said, holding the three sets of car keys over his head. He stood in the kitchen with dinner half done and a sixteen year old lunging for the keys in his hand.

"It took them fourteen years just to kiss; we've gotta do this now!" She leapt again.

"If, and let me repeat that for you, _if_ they get married, it won't be in Reno."

"Why not?" She demanded.

"Have you _met_ your parents?"

She crossed her hands over her chest and sat down. "Point taken."

"Dude, are you coming?" Harvey asked, jogging into the kitchen with Penny on his heels.

"Sit!" Dean commanded. Harvey and Penny skittered to chairs and sat down. "Lemme make this real clear right now. Nobody's going to Reno today, especially not Miss _I Can Only Make Right Turns_—"

"Not true, I can make lefts on one-ways—"

"I rest my case," Dean said.

Harvey piped up, "But they might change their mind—"

"And if that's true, let it happen _before_ Elvis says 'repeat after me.'" Neither could argue that point. Dean softened a little at their expressions of dejection. "Kathy and Harry don't want you guys to worry about that stuff."

"But it's important—" Harvey urged.

"Yeah, that's why you're not gonna go busting out there screaming about Reno, got it? _Because_ it's important." They pouted. "Boo hoo, your parents are kissing." He shooed them out of the kitchen. Penny didn't follow them out but instead remained until the others were gone.

"Daddy, were you and mommy married?" She asked.

Danger Will Robinson.

"Baby Girl, do you know what marriage is?" He asked.

She looked like she was trying to recall something elusive. "Um . . . a contract negotiation?"

Dean huffed. "I wish you guys would stop quoting Jess."

"Then no."

He carefully chose his words. "Marriage is the joining of two people, two souls, into one. That is _literally_ what happened with me and your mom." He believed he just won the most truthful liar of the year award. Ah, parenthood.

She let out a dreamy sigh and muttered, "That is so romantic." She shook out her fingers and smiled. "I gotta tell Gus Gus." It was her nickname for Gus, the nine year old son of their neighbor across the way, Mr. Thomas Anderson. Taken from the mouse in Cinderella, Penny slapped it on her new best friend the year previous when they had first met. Gus' mom wasn't in the picture and from all Dean could get out of Tom, she hadn't been for years and wasn't likely to be in the future. Apparently, when Tom came out to her when Gus was a baby, she left without looking back once.

Dean looked to his little girl who was growing up before his eyes and he tried not to dwell on the fact that she had just uttered the word 'romantic' which inherently implied she was fully aware of romance. He had already put the fear of Chuck into too many of the guys puppy-dogging after Jess. The idea he'd soon have to do the same with Penny horrified him. He now fully understood the male mind from a vastly different perspective and he knew without a doubt he would never let any guys that remotely resembled who he was growing up near his girls. It had nothing to do with whether or not he trusted Jess and Penny to make their decisions but it was like saying whether he trusted a hungry ghoul with either of them. Teenaged boys were ghouls. Harvey was trying very hard for his ghoul-status. He definitely needed all three adults on deck to brunt that fate.

Looking to her face, the face of a child, he knew he was supposed to be counting the days to rejoin Sam, and Spencer, Cas and Derek, Bobby and Aunt Diana back in Sioux Falls, to go home and see Lisa and Ben again, but from his first day with Penny he wished every moment that time would just stop and she would stay a little girl.

He felt Penny hug his side. "You look sad."

"Sad? With you right here? Not possible." He kissed the top of her head then sent her off.

Romance. It wasn't anything Dean considered in his time there. The problem with intimacy after what he'd been through was a prohibitive factor and then his relationship with Lisa was another. He was fully spoken for despite the fact that the year he arrived his girlfriend hadn't even been born yet. Explaining that to Kathy was easier than explaining it to Harry. Harry was convinced Dean was a monk. Of course he flirted but that was unavoidable. Whenever he spoke to a woman he had a way of just instantly breaking down barriers that simply _defined_ flirting. His eyes spoke instant trust. Being the personification of life encouraged the language and signals of coupling. He couldn't help it. Dean had always assumed he was just _that good_ but the realization of the origins of those feelings put things in a different light. Now when he had to decline a phone number or a drink invite here or there it came with a little guilt, as if he'd tricked women (and quite a few men too, all told) into being attracted to him. He was less Casanova and more tip of Cupid's arrow.

No, he didn't really consider romance but he knew love and what it looked like. He had always teased Kathy about Harry because he had seen what she had tried to keep from growing. They always danced near that precipice that would drop them headlong into romance. They were like the buds in his flower garden just before bloom, not aware they could be anything else and satisfied with what they were while those around them understood what they could be.

As with the pattern of the beginning of their relationship, Kathy and Harry took their time to their children's consternation but less than a year later, the spring of 1987 saw a small, intimate backyard wedding that was only a technicality when it came to the union of their family. At seventeen Jessica played Maid of Honor to her mother and fifteen year old Harvey held the duty of Best Man to his father. A ten year old Penelope would drop a rainbow of petals as Flower Girl and Gus Gus had been drafted by Penny to be Ring Boy. Dave had been requested to give the Bride away but that morning a serial killer in Boca Raton drew him and his team away from the wedding. Dean then had to pull double duty walking the Bride down the aisle and catering the event.

"You look more nervous than I do," Kathy observed on the morning in one of those few moments Dean bounced from kitchen to bedroom. Jess was applying her mom's makeup. Penny was downstairs with Gus Gus entertaining the family and friends.

"This wedding is starting to look like the Old Woman in the Shoe. I've got no idea what the hell I'm gonna do."

"Who's down there?"

"Missy, Marc, Thomas and his plus one, everybody you RSVP'd from your office plus two, everybody on Harry's list plus one, and a plus two out of nowhere. Art Campbell—"

Kathy's eyes lit up. "He's here?"

"With a girlfriend. Hadn't seen him at the last two family get-togethers."

"He was at Annapolis then."

"Ah, civilian."

"But still a Campbell. Like Dave, one of his parents wasn't too receptive to the idea of getting into the family business. His mom actually arrested his dad for . . ." she looked to Jess. "Busted tail light." Dean figured that was either grave desecration or breaking and entering. Assault with a deadly weapon wouldn't have gotten him arrested since whatever he was assaulting likely wouldn't stick around to press charges.

Jess looked between her mom and Dean. "You don't have to talk in code, you guys. Christian told me everything."

"Since when do you talk to Christian?" Her mother asked, shock on both accounts blanking away the more important question.

"Since his mom just about flipped her lid on him and threatened to send him to the cousins in Tripoli. He's been penpaling by force for the last five months. I'm not gonna ask why you didn't tell me but I've been spying—"

"Spying?" Both Dean and Kathy said, looking like they had swallowed tumbleweed.

"I . . . I think I handled it well," she said, clearly feeling immensely mature. She looked to her mom in the mirror they were both facing. "You're a witch." She looked to Dean. "And you're . . . Super Witch. Or something."

"You're not freaked out?" Dean asked.

"I was but, come on Dean, we all suspected something. You're like an earthquake sniffer. Harry's convinced you're psychic. Remember that month I wouldn't talk to either of you?"

"That wasn't you just being a teenager?" Kathy asked, reaching back and holding her daughter's hand.

"I was being covert. Or shell-shocked. Take your pick. So, Art? Civilian. Annapolis. That's where you left off." She was clearly trying to seem more put together about it all than she really was. She'd been living with the truth for months without saying a word. What had she seen that she couldn't rationalize? What had she seen that had terrified her? They were both gonna strangle Christian Campbell the next time they saw him.

"We'll have a long talk later," Kathy promised her daughter.

"_Later_ is honeymoon territory," she reminded her mother.

"Then I'll have long talk duty," Dean said. Kathy mouthed a 'thank you.'

"Art is Samuel's youngest brother's youngest child."

"The baby," Dean concluded. That was the vibe he had picked up from him when they'd met downstairs. He was small and had his Cousin Mary's blue eyes. Dean never would have figured the kid was a graduate of the naval academy but then again, if his dad was a Campbell, the kid was probably a SEAL.

"You think you can make the food stretch?" Kathy asked.

"I'm not worried about the food; I always make too much anyway."

"Then?"

"A dozen cut throat lawyers and computer mole people, Kathy?"

She immediately understood. "Oh, right, the booze."

"Yep."

"Send somebody on a run," Jess suggested.

"Missy," Kathy said with an authoritative nod.

"Why?" Jess asked.

There was a knock at the bedroom door. Dean opened it to see Missouri Moseley there with a two hundred dollar receipt from the local liquor store in a card that said 'Congratulations!'

"Wedding present," she said with a mischievous smile.

"You like seeing me freak out," Dean said, shaking his head.

"A little," she confessed.

The wedding went off without a hiccup, held in a backyard that took weeks for Dean to transform into a fantasy-like garden. Cotton blossom dogwoods and drooping willows canopied the entire space. The arch was made of thorn-free rose vines. The benches were twisted bleached wood branches that snaked in and out of the ground. The aisle was a sheet of white heather. The bride was beautiful, the groom was dashing, and the children were beside themselves when the couple finally made everything official with a kiss.

The cake was five tiers of red velvet and Dutch chocolate. The white icing was a canvas for hundreds of tiny sugar-flowers in a prism of colors, spiraling up to the precipice where an iced representation of Kathy and Harry stood in smiling splendor. Harvey DJ'd to his dad's strict instruction despite his desire to break out some Queen. Jess kept the odd configuration of guests as a cohesive whole using a hybrid charm she learned from both her mother and Dean. Penny and Gus ate and danced and made people laugh all day.

Dean received business cards from just about every guest requesting him to cater their next affair. He didn't know how to respond but each time Jess was right next to him setting up appointments.

"So, now you're my manager?" Dean asked.

"I have to practice my filings and client branding. You wanna be an LLC?"

"A what?"

The bride and groom changed into their traveling clothes, took up their suitcases and said goodbye to their guests and then took a good amount of time saying goodbye to their kids. They were off for two weeks of Paris in the springtime.

"Bring me back a bottle of Shalimar," Jess begged her mom, holding her tight in a hug.

"You're too young for Shalimar," Kathy said.

"That wasn't a _no_."

Harry looked to Harvey and tousled his hair. Harvey pulled his dad close. Neither said a word. Switching places, Harvey begged Kathy for chocolate and Jess hugged the strong and silent man in her life that she'd cherished as the only father she'd ever known. Penny ran to everybody and hooked them all in one giant embrace.

Dean watched with a smile from an arm's length away when Harry looked to him and gestured him over to join the tackle. He did.

* * *

Dean kept his catering side job small despite the increasing demand that word of mouth caused after each subsequent event. His priorities were the kids and would remain the kids until they were off to college. Always at the back of his mind through their years together was Penelope's scant biography. In some recollections she was an only child; in others she had four older brothers. That was of course not exactly true on the first and not at all true in the second. It was clear she was hiding her past from those who knew her in the future. It gave him pause to truly understand that she could have such gaps in her past that was just overlooked in her official record. There was no doubt in his mind that an agency as thorough and bureaucratic as the FBI wouldn't leave gaps like that in her file unless there was a reason. The other part of her biography that troubled him was the deaths of her mother and step-father. One day a few years from then, after Penny turned eighteen but before she could start school at Caltech, if the file could be trusted, they might lose Kathy and Harry. Dean couldn't know if the file could be trusted. Because of that obscurity in truth, Dean knew, absolutely, no matter what, he would save them. At the very least he'd try his damnedest to save them.

"Gus Gus?" Penny said over the walkie-talkie she now kept with her at all times. It was fall of '87. Looking out her bedroom window and out over their street she stared at the window opposite hers. A moment later her best friend peeked through his curtains and waved at her.

"Hey, Penny," he said over the companion walkie-talkie. A few months prior, when Penny told him she had picked up the devices, he fully expected them to be the pinkest things he'd ever seen but when she pulled the package out he was surprised to see they weren't at all Barbie brand. Slate gray with a decent range he knew she had invested a good amount of her allowance on them. Of course, she liberally decorated hers to taste with a hot glue gun and a million beads and crystals she had picked up in Chinatown. His dad being an army vet, Gus painted his camo-green.

"Guess what?"

"You know I can't ever guess."

"Mr. J's making a computer for kids!"

"No way!"

"He told Harry to brainstorm. Harry said we can come up with stuff. Don't tell anybody."

"Not a word."

"Wanna come over?"

Sounding immediately deflated, Gus said, "My dad's not home yet."

"Where'd he go?"

"The doctor. He's sick. He didn't want me to go with him."

"What about Phil?" She asked about Tom's live in boyfriend.

Now sounding a little sad mixed in with a little glad, Gus said, "He left last night. He took all his stuff."

"Why didn't you call me?"

"I didn't want to talk about it."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I don't mind talking now."

"Want me to come over?"

"Okay."

Downstairs, Penny went into the kitchen where her dad was making dinner. "Can I go over to Gus' house?"

"Finished your homework?" Dean asked.

"Most of it."

"Penny—"

"But he's all alone. Phil left and his daddy's sick at the doctor."

"Not a winning argument. You're both not gonna be alone over there. Gimme," Dean said pointing to the walkie. She handed it over.

"Gus?"

"Hi, Mr. Garcia."

"We have a problem. You're ten and alone at home. I want you to write a note for your dad telling him you're here. Copy that note a couple of times and put them wherever he'll see them, then ping me back and I'll come get you."

"You sure?" Gus asked.

"You have dinner over there?"

"Um . . ."

"Then yeah, I'm sure."

"Okay." Gus did as he was told and spent that evening at the house across the street. He and Penny spent most of the evening building the supercomputer of their dreams and then reluctantly finishing their homework. When Mr. Anderson came over later that night, Dean met him at the door. The look on his face told Dean that whatever news he received from his doctor wasn't positive. He looked more worn than Dean had ever seen him. Tom, like Gus, was taller than average with curly dark brown hair and bright brown eyes. Now there was a dullness to Tom's eyes and a sadness circling them.

"Hey, Dean."

"What's going on?" Dean asked.

Tom shook his head. Dean was never one to mince words. "Um, it's, um. I don't even know—" he couldn't finish his words.

Dean knew not to push. "Did you eat?"

Tom let out a small laugh and just said, "You're always feeding us. Is he ready?"

"Come on, first you'll eat. You look like you're about to fall over." Dean said, inviting him in. "They're upstairs designing the Matrix."

"The what?" He asked.

"Good reference used way too soon," Dean said to himself. "Computers." Tom was a NASA contractor out of the Ames Research Center and his son's interest in computers could be directly tracked to him. He'd been an intelligence officer during Vietnam. Dean served out a plateful of leftovers and popped it in the oven to heat up.

He studied Tom but the other man was avoiding his eyes. "You're sick."

Tom nodded. "It's getting obvious."

Dean could combat cuts and injuries, but disease eluded him. Whenever Penny or the kids caught the cold or flu he felt helpless. Gus' dad sat there at the table and that helpless feeling passed over him again.

"How bad is it?"

Tom hesitated. The stigma surrounding what he was suffering from was so high, for a flash of a moment he feared the fallout of what he was about to say would affect his son's welcome in that home. Phil had run away as fast as he could. Then he saw Dean's concern and the nearly two years of knowing him erased his fear. "They're still figuring it out. We're in ground zero for it so I'm not going to panic. Not yet."

Dean immediately realized what Tom was telling him. It was 1987. It might as well have been a death sentence. Of course he couldn't and would never say that. He couldn't take away Tom's hope like that. He couldn't send him a little further into a depression he was clearly already feeling but Dean couldn't help but think about Gus. The kid didn't have anyone else but his dad.

Dean placed his hand on Tom's shoulder. "Good, you shouldn't panic. Focus on getting better."

Feeling Dean's hand on his shoulder, knowing that he completely understood what Tom was suffering from, seeing that Dean knew what was going to happen, what he could clearly see Tom also knew was going to happen but choosing to extend hope instead of despair . . . it brought him to the first tears he would shed for his abbreviated future.

Dean sat across from him and passed him a box of tissues.

"I don't know what I'm gonna tell him."

"The only thing that'll make sense to a ten year old—you tell him you love him."

Tom nodded. He'd burned through a few tissues but he horded them. Dean extended his hand to collect them and the look of pure horrific amazement on Tom's face confused Dean at first before he understood Tom's fear. Dean took them from him without any words.

"I've been terrified of even cooking, afraid he'd get it."

"That's not how it happens," Dean said.

Tom gave a faint smile that quickly dissipated. "It's not how I got it." He said no more. Dean didn't inquire any further. Tom shook his head. "I notice most people assume things. You see it in the paper, on TV. Phil left on his indignant high horse but I," it was almost hard to say to another person but so far Dean wasn't repulsed which was the common reaction among those outside his circle. "I was faithful to him. Why does he seem fine and I'm falling apart?"

"It hits different people at different speeds."

"How do you know that? You're so calm right now."

"Tom, It's easy for me to be calm; you're the one going through it."

Tom nodded. "Yeah."

The timer went off. Dean took the plate from the oven and set it down before him. "Eat something."

"Thank you."

"Welcome."

That night, Dean went to his tablet and searched as far into the future as he could for anything he could do to help Tom. There wasn't any magic pill he could put together to stop the virus unless he could dabble in materials with radioactive half-lives but he identified the medications that were currently available that when taken in combination could help him. Dean brought the list over to him the next morning before he left for work.

"How did you—" Tom started to ask, seeing one of the medications his doctor had prescribed for him.

"Just trust me," Dean said.

"Okay. Thank you. Can Gus stay over at your place after school? I might have to convince my doctor about all this."

"You don't have to ask."

Tom could only nod. Twenty four hours prior he'd felt more alone than he had in years and now he had something to hold onto. Yesterday he was a dying man; today he had a sliver of a chance at life. Gus might not be left alone in the world before he hit eleven.

"Dad?" Gus called from behind him, his book bag on his back. "Your coffee's getting—you okay?" Gus asked, seeing the look in his dad's face. Thomas blinked and realized he was standing at the open door and Dean was gone.

"Yeah, I'm okay."

* * *

Jessica Pearson received her acceptance letter to Stanford University the next spring. Going to school barely a half hour away from home was a mixed bag. She would live on campus even though she had the option to commute. That was her mom's insistence seeing as college was almost as much about friendship as it was about education. She had also received acceptances from Sarah Lawrence, Columbia, Barnard, Princeton, Yale, and Harvard undergrad. She had choices to leave home four years before she would apply to Harvard Law but it was that knowledge that led her to Stanford. Seven years then possibly a lifetime from home wasn't a decision she was prepared to make right then. Her whole family was in the Bay.

Her senior prom wasn't as eventful as she had _hoped_ it would be seeing as Dean, assistant coach for two of her school's teams, was assigned as one of the chaperones. With the general knowledge that Coach G knew how to not only handle a baseball bat but could also shoot arrows at people, Jess's date was on his best behavior to her utter dismay.

"You're home early," her mother said as Jess walked into the house that night. Harry and Kathy were curled up on the couch watching a movie.

"José said he wanted to get me home on curfew," she grumbled.

"We said you could be out later," Harry said.

"He didn't care," she said before she turned to mope up the stairs.

"Did he do—?"

"I wish," she sighed to herself. To her parents she said, "I'm gonna work on my speech," before she went up to her room to finish up her valediction. Being the top student in her graduating class, Jessica Pearson composed a valedictory address that would have pointed references to courage and standing up to power. She got everyone up on their feet cheering by the end of it . . . well, everyone _except_ José.

That fall the entire family packed up all three cars and drove Jess down to move into her new home in Palo Alto. After the tears and resignation and promises to see her family every weekend, Jess would be on her own for the first time in her life.

"I'm gonna miss you," Penny said holding tight to her big sister.

Jess kissed her on the cheek and said, "I'm gonna miss you too."

Harvey wasn't always great at verbalizing what he felt but the idea of not having Jess right down the hall at all times hurt more than he could say.

"Harve?" Jess said. "You look like a kicked puppy."

"Shut up, Jess," he mumbled. She hugged him. He let her, gladly.

Harry and Kathy made sure she had everything she needed; they got all the essential campus phone numbers and spoke at length to the RA of her floor. Saying goodbye was far less straight forward. Harry, who had never been good at relaying his feelings, gave her cheek an awkward kiss then gave her shoulders a quick hug. Before he could release her, she kept hold of him.

"I love you, Daddy," she said very quietly so only he could hear.

Harold Specter melted and held his little girl until the hurt went away. "Love you too."

Dean handed her a can of pepper spray, a graduation gift after they had spent nearly the entire summer on self-defense. "Always go—"

Jess laughed and repeated, "For the balls, got it." She hugged him. "Make enough dinner for me on Sunday, Mary."

"You got it, Mini-Me."

They left Jess and Kathy alone to say their farewells. "How do you feel?" Kathy asked her.

"Probably better than you did, moving from Kansas," Jess said with a shrug. "I can hop on a bus and be home in an hour. I feel stupid."

"This is still a separation; don't feel bad about being sad."

"I know. And I am sad but happy too. It's weird."

Kathy hugged her and rubbed her shoulders. "You are gonna be fine."

"I don't want you guys to leave."

Kathy held up a flyer she'd plucked from a billboard in the common room. "When the Freshman Mixer starts you're gonna hope we're long gone."

"You took this down?"

"It was wallpapered down there."

Jess took the flyer from her mom. "Okay."

"Don't 'okay,' I want you to tell me you'll go out and make some friends." Receiving an assurance from her daughter, Kathy gave Jess a big hug and a kiss. Reaching into her pocket, Kathy pulled out the keys to the Benz. She held it out to her daughter.

"No way—"

"Harry and I just bought a semester-long permit for it so, if you don't want it—"

"Oh my God!" Jess clutched the keys to the car and jumped up and down. Outside in the hall, everyone heard her cries of excitement and laughed.

"Does this mean I have to get the Charger when I graduate?" Harvey asked with a grimace as if it wasn't something he was looking forward to.

"What's wrong with the Charger?" Harry asked.

"I kinda like the new BMWs."

Harry looked to Dean, "When did my kid become a yuppie?"

Dean held up his hands, "Ask Marc."

Harvey frowned. "I'm not a yuppie."

"What's a yuppie?" Penny asked.

"Most of the kids at this school," Dean answered.

"Ohh."

* * *

Following the path of history had already challenged Dean to his core but when Penny hit twelve he realized just how aggressively he was willing to fight against fate. In a story she'd told Derek and their partner Emily in the future, Dean knew that sometime during that year a clown at a birthday party she would go to would put his hands on his little girl and that moment would stay with her forever. He had options but he knew the thread of destiny was really a garrote. If he denied her permission to go to any parties she might manage to sneak out. If he inquired before hand if any clowns would be invited as entertainment he might just give someone who would say 'no' the idea to begin with. His only solution was to go to each and every party with her and monitor at all times. If there were any clowns present, it would be his duty to break fingers. Dean wondered if Sam's own hatred and fear of clowns had a similar origin. It made him sick to consider it. In the meantime, Dean reinforced in his little girl the core lesson that if anyone ever made her feel uncomfortable she should scream and run away or fight back if she couldn't.

During the spring and summer of 1989 he and a recruited Kathy went to more parties than they could count. A few featured clowns and Dean made sure his presence was known. Nothing happened.

"I am so mad at you right now," Dean said one day in September in the garden as he looked up to the sky. "Like, honestly? Why? She's twelve for fuck's sake."

The phone rang and he made his way into the house. "Hello—"

"Holy shi—_crap_, Dean, Penny just broke some clown's nose!" Harvey exclaimed from the other line.

"What?!"

"You have to come down to school—"

"I'm on my way," he said with the keys to the Charger zooming across the room from the peg on the wall and landing in his hands. At their school, Dean went up to the Headmaster's office. Outside in the hall were Penny, who was clearly in the middle of a crying jag with an ice pack on her knuckles, and Harvey who had his arm around her. "Penny!" Dean called out to her.

"Daddy!" She ran over to him.

He swept her up in his arms. "You okay?" She nodded. "What happened?" She looked down and avoided his eyes. He knew that misplaced guilty feeling well enough and didn't push. "Harve?"

"Apparently some kid in her class was having a pizza party for his birthday during reading hour. His dad hired a clown to do balloon animals. Nobody knows what happened but one minute everything's fine and the next the guy's bleeding."

"Coach Garcia?" Headmaster Richard Montgomery said from the door leading to his office. "Come in."

"Is he in there?" Dean asked regarding the clown.

"He's at the hospital," the Headmaster said as if it were a tragedy.

"Which one?"

"Dean, _please_," the Headmaster said, gesturing to his office. Dean set Penny down next to Harvey, kissed her forehead, and then went into the office.

"Penelope hit that man. You should have seen it, it was horrible. There was blood everywhere. The kids were all screaming. I know you're aware that we have a Zero Tolerance policy towards physical—"

Dean almost couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Oh, hell no. Rick, don't even go there. If you think you're gonna dodge a lawsuit from the _assclown_ by kicking my kid out of school you've got another thing coming. First, he didn't belong on campus. I don't care how much whoever hired him to come here donated to the library or endowment or the slush fund but you don't get paid to have perverted strangers near our kids. Second, she's twelve and a foot tall. _Everybody_ knows her. She's rainbows and butterflies and she just broke some idiot's nose so get your head out of your ass and use your imagination to figure out what just happened. Third, I'm Chair of the PTA, so if you think I'm not gonna have the fucking wrath of every single parent in this school on your head for this you've got another thing coming. Last, Kathy, you know, her mom, she's senior partner at Engel, Powell, and Kinkade. You already know what that means, ask City Hall. You even _think_ of finishing that sentence and this school will be renamed _Penelope Maria Garcia Academy_ by Christmas. Got it?"

Rick opened his mouth, a small sound escaped and then he closed it again.

With a deadly look in his eyes, Dean asked, "Now, which hospital did they send the clown to?"

"I'm sure if I tell you I might just make myself an accessory to murder so understand me when I say I'm not going to tell you. For my sake but also for Penelope's."

Dean breathed and settled his nerves. He calmed his anger down just enough to have rational thoughts again. He nodded. "Okay. Fine. _Fine_." He turned to leave before looking back towards him. "I'm gonna take my kid home now, I'm gonna make sure she's okay, and then I'll send her back here when she wants to, _if_ she wants to. Other than everything I just told you, we'll pretend this never happened. Got it?"

Rick nodded.

Dean exited the office, slamming the door behind him. Penny and Harvey looked up to him in pure astonishment. Apparently he had been speaking loudly enough for his words to penetrate. To Harvey he asked, "Want a half day?"

"Hell yeah."

Dean went to Penny and crouched before her. "You never have to tell me or anybody else what happened. I want you to know that what you did was right and never feel guilty about it, okay?" She nodded. "Wanna go home now?" She nodded again. Shifting forward in her seat she threw her arms around his neck and felt safe.

"Don't ever leave me, Daddy," she whispered.

"Not ever."

* * *

"Gus Gus?" Penny chirped over her walkie a month later on Friday the 13th, October of 1989.

"Hey, Penny."

"I saw you get in," she said looking out to the street.

"Yeah, I still have on my bag," he said, going to his window.

"Are you packed?"

"You asked me yesterday."

"Not an answer."

"I'm packed. My dad still thinks it's weird but he trusts your dad. He'll be home by six."

"Okay. Daddy said we're leaving at seven. Disneyland!" She danced a little.

"I can't believe you guys convinced him. He never takes time off work and I never get to stay home from school."

"When Daddy says we gotta go, we usually find some place nice."

"I don't understand."

"Me either, really. He's funny like that," Penny said. Gus didn't really get it but he guessed he wasn't supposed to.

"I'm gonna get my homework done and come over," he said.

"Okay."

Both Harry and Kathy came home at the end of the business day, something they rarely managed to do on Fridays. Dean had told them from the start of the year that they would have to plan to take the week of October 15th off from work and the kids would have to miss school. They never asked Dean why anymore when it came to those kinds of warnings but they had never been given warning so far in advance or for such an extended period of time. Whatever was supposed to happen that week they knew it was huge. They took the warning very seriously. On their way down to Anaheim they would pick Jess up from school. Harvey was upset as the World Series was being held in the Bay that year but however reluctant he was he knew a warning from Dean meant more than any baseball game.

That Friday the family, along with Tom and Gus, headed out of San Francisco. Harry had rented out a townhouse for the week and they slept in new beds that early Saturday morning when they finally arrived. Dean woke them up late that morning with a big breakfast and a request that they try to have as much fun as possible.

Saturday was spent as if the other shoe was sure to soon drop but when it didn't Sunday was spent with more joy. By Monday, no one even remembered why they were in Disneyland, just that they were glad they were. On Tuesday, everything changed.

Everyone was in the townhouse after a day of fun when Harvey turned on the television to catch game three of the series. Five minutes later the signal was disrupted.

"No, the game," Harvey despaired, going to the antenna and moving it. He changed the channel. A news bulletin flashed across the screen. A massive earthquake had just hit San Francisco.

Harry and Kathy immediately looked to Dean. He just nodded to them.

"How bad was it?" Gus asked the room in general. No one could answer him. Tom looked from his son to Dean and he swallowed hard. Penny curled up to her dad and Jess sat with Harvey in front of the television trying to glean anymore facts from the scant reports that were trickling out. Hours later Gus would receive an answer: it had been very bad. Sections of the Bay Bridge had collapsed. Part of the freeway crashed down. Walls fell onto innocent bystanders crushing them. Water and power were disrupted. People were dead, thousands were injured. It was a catastrophe for the city and the entire surrounding area. But they were safe.

"How did you know?" Tom asked Dean after a barely eaten dinner. The kids had all tried to call their friends to see if they were okay but they couldn't get through. They went to bed early in hopes of getting answers in the morning. Kathy and Harry were watching over them, both feeling like they had just been missed by a bullet.

"That's not something I can say," Dean said. "Trust me, it won't make sense."

"Trust you? Other than Gus, Dean I don't think I trust anybody but you. Who knows what could have happened, where any of us might have been today. This is the second time you've saved me."

"Tom—"

"I've got two years and counting because of you and then this? This? I don't even know what this is."

"It's not your time. That's all any of this is."

"How do you know that?" He asked.

Answering truthfully and still avoiding the question Dean said, "Because your future isn't written."

Tom smiled. "Fortune cookie?"

"Hell, who knows? Probably. If it isn't written, you can change it. That's the long and short of it."

"What if it is written but I don't know what it says?"

"It's all the same, isn't it?"

"I don't know if that's hopeful or cynical."

"When it comes to fate, bet on cynical."

* * *

Harry held Kathy as she slept against him. He looked over to the kids as they breathed evenly and also were fast asleep. They had piled onto the largest bed in their borrowed home and refused to be separated. The sun was starting to break through the windows. He didn't want to think about the chaos back at home, he didn't want to think about all those people still trapped and scared under a mountain of debris. He didn't want to think about those people waiting and waiting for news only to be visited by a police officer holding a nightmare any minute during this new day. He just wanted to focus on what was in front of him and who was in his arms. He just wanted . . . to not feel so grateful, to not be so bitterly glad. He was so happy that he didn't have to feel so much sadness and it made him feel sick of himself. Oh, but still . . . oh, but still . . .

"Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you," he said again. He would repeat it over and over in his aching mind as the day wore on. "Thank you."

* * *

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	28. Carved Into a New Animal

A/N: Don't forget to check my profile for the soundtrack  
A/N#2: To the anon/unsigned reviews: Thanks for commenting!**  
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**Chapter Twenty Eight**

**Carved Into a New Animal**

"It is quite true what philosophy says; that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forwards. Which principle, the more one thinks it through, ends exactly with the thought that temporal life can never properly be understood precisely because I can at no instant find complete rest in which to adopt a position: _backwards_."

-Søren Kierkegaard

_De omnibus dubitandum est_  
"Everything must be doubted"

-Søren Kierkegaard

He blamed Jess for ruining his life. Well, okay, part of it was Jess, the other part was the earthquake but nonetheless, his life was ruined. Maybe that was a little hyperbolic but at seventeen, Harvey could appreciate extremes.

Ever since he was little his entire future was sealed in baseball. He ate it, drank it, and slept it. His destiny was to play for the New York Yankees right out of high school, damn the odds. Suddenly, with senior year on him and the idea of mortality literally on his doorstep, Harvey kept repeating over and over the scene of that World Series blanking off the television screen and his hometown turning to rubble. He thought to himself how satisfied would he have been with his life if he had died in a ballpark? Whose life would he have affected? How would he be remembered? Sure, there were icons like Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron and Jackie Robinson but the world had changed so much since men of that mold could inspire millions. Was it Harvey's goal to inspire millions? Was it the game, the fame, or the challenge that spurred him? He had never asked himself those questions before. No one talked about the game in the aftermath of the carnage. It was unseemly, petty, and to so many people completely excessive for the times. That was the new prism with which he observed his childhood passion and it was in those moments that he realized that was all baseball was to him—a childhood pastime.

Seeing his home humbled, seeing the memorials, Harvey realized he wasn't satisfied with a future that was only plausible when to escape from reality or completely implausible when reality encroached too close. He still loved the game, that hadn't and would probably never change but that was the essence of what was wrong with it—it was a game. There were no risks, no real rewards, not for him anyway. Money wasn't a question in his life. And the respect it afforded could fit on the back and front of a trading card. Harvey realized after the quake and surrounded by stories of heroism and survival that he valued respect far more than adoration. Harvey Reginald Specter wanted respect.

There lay Jess's role in his ruination because now with his new found perspective he realized that as time passed he felt more satisfaction in Mock Trial then he did on the mound. Searching case law was more interesting than studying pro games. Practicing his delivery was more important than practicing his curve ball. Jess had been at Stanford for a year and everyone on the Trial team had assumed he would take after her, to fill her shoes. He suddenly had to take on a mantle of expectation he had never anticipated. She was so much better than him at the legal arts that for the first time in his life he actually felt like he had to live up to someone else's legacy. He had to prove himself. It was a thrill he'd never experienced and with success didn't come blind and childlike devotion but solid recognition.

"Kid, get your head in it," Dean said from his crouched spot in the backyard. Harvey was practicing his fast ball that was more like a meandering scenic route ball. Senior year meant exhibition game after exhibition game. Everything was starting to look like white noise to him and he knew, Harvey knew, that was the death knell. Fall was almost over and the New Year ahead stretched out infinitely.

"Dean?" He called out. He was very quiet. There was a dry thing in his throat.

"Yeah, bud?"

"I—" Harvey knew they were supposed to be hard words to say even though he had already reached his conclusion. He knew he couldn't be convinced otherwise and that Dean wouldn't try. Even though Dean was assistant coach, Harvey knew he was there less for the love of the game then he was for Harvey himself. The words would probably be impossible to say if his family resembled any of his teammates' families. Team parents were worse than stage moms. As it was, his dad would have loved it if Harvey was into operating databases over running bases and his mom would be over the moon if Stanford and not a bullpen was his post-high school destination. And then there was Dean who Harvey was sure would be helping him learn how to dance flamenco if that's where his new interests lie. They weren't supposed to be hard words to say since he had already made up his mind but he couldn't understand why the words were still so hard to get out.

Dean put down his mitt and took a deep sigh before he nodded with the most comforting and reassuring smile.

Harvey's mouth dropped open. "How'd you know?"

"You read like a stop sign."

Harvey bristled. "Do not."

"Suggestion: might wanna add Drama Club to your list."

"You mad at me?" Harvey asked, his previous self-assurance completely drained away.

"I wasn't mad when you scratched the brand new T-Bird, I'm not gonna be mad now," Dean said hoping Harvey wasn't headed down a Sam-sized guilt-paved road.

"But you're disappointed?"

"Harve, that voice in your head telling you all this stuff isn't mine. Kid, I go where you go. That is, unless you join Interpretive Dance. Then you're on your own," Dean said before pondering for a moment and caving, "But, I might drive you to rehearsals."

Harvey tried not to smile. Instead he said, "It can't be that easy to just let go."

"Says who?"

Harvey shrugged with irritation. "People. Responsibility," he waved his hands in frustration, "I don't know. The team needs me."

"This is high school. Show me the marriage certificate or it didn't happen."

He didn't understand. "You want me to quit?"

"Harve, listen to what I'm saying, don't just see my mouth moving and hear what you want. I want you to do _whatever _makes you happy. Period. And bud, you haven't looked happy for weeks."

"That bad?" He asked and Dean nodded. "I like playing. I do. But—" His voice cut off. He wasn't sure how to word it.

"Yeah?" Dean encouraged.

"But my life? My whole life? I picked it when I was four. I kept going because it was fun; the guys on the team were always my friends. There just wasn't anything better."

Dean went over to him and patted his shoulder before saying, "Until there was."

"I'm a _flake_," Harvey said as if it were a great revelation.

Dean chuckled at the look of bowled over amazement on Harvey's face. "You're seventeen. That feeling's gonna be chronic for a couple more years."

A touch of panic hit Harvey's voice. "I'm not thinking this through—"

"Okay, okay, calm down. You like playing?"

That wasn't the question. "Yeah."

"Then do it. I can play pool without being a pool shark; you can play ball without building your whole future on it."

As if a second, greater revelation had hit him, Harvey's eyes widened and he nodded very slowly. "Play for fun?"

Dean was _this _close to absolutely losing it but kept his face neutral and just said, "Radical idea, I know."

For the first time in a while, Harvey looked like the entire world wasn't sitting on the back of his neck. Dean sighed and thought to himself, this was the childhood he'd missed. Different circumstances, different dynamics, same pressure, different consequences. Monsters and demons didn't have to be involved for all the other puzzle pieces to fall into place. Dean understood the reasoning; the whys and hows he had to be raised as a hunter and over the years he'd gotten to know his father as a man rather than as a myth. John had always wanted the best for his boys and so he pushed them to save them in their new and changed reality. Dean didn't know Harvey's future the way John could see it plain for Sammy and Dean. Not knowing Harvey's place in the cosmic order was a relief. Dean just wanted to give one regular kid a nice regular life because at that point in time it didn't matter what his destiny was: it was all the same.

The way he looked after Harvey was the way Harry took over the practical bringing up of Penelope. Knowing her future, Dean knew Harry would have to take point to get her to where she needed to be. She, Gus, and Harry were like peas in a pod with Tom just waiting for them to get the right foundation for him to introduce them to NASA-grade compsci. Dean was pretty sure that would lead to Penelope's FBI future not too far into the horizon.

Playing for fun, having the game take a backseat that senior year and focusing on a whole new future changed Harvey. Everything was new, everything was a challenge. Maybe his sister hadn't ruined his life; maybe she had introduced him to a new way of living. Having to rely mainly on himself for a win was a drastic change from being a team player. He began to trust his instincts and opinions more than ever. Harvey went from a quiet kid who had always known his mind but had always been too afraid to assert himself into becoming a pillar of confidence.

Of everyone who noted the change, Penny appreciated it most.

"Harvey?" She began one evening around the dinner table. Dean had laid out quite a spread before heading out to cater a bachelorette party. With Harvey and Penny old enough to be home alone, Dean felt it was time to break out of his housewife-mold and add to the home finances. It felt important to him that Penny see him as capable of playing both roles so she would never unconsciously limit herself or doubt her place in their home. She had to know that in their family the Garcias weren't dependent on the Pearsons and Specters but were equal members of the household. That way, when Dean was home with them she would understand it was because her daddy had made that choice, not because he had no other options. It hadn't been necessary he'd been told over and over by both Kathy and Harry but it was something he needed to do for his daughter.

Oddly enough, of those to resist that change the most had been Harry. Harry's own childhood memories were scarred with a strict and unyielding father, a distant and unhappy mother and a little brother who was only secure in the arms of his nanny. Harry grew up essentially alone and while everything around him fed him an image of Americana that was supposed to be baseball and apple pie, it was vastly different in spite of his family's fortune. There was no gladness, no love in his home. He didn't doubt that was the main reason he was the way he was with the kids. He knew it, understood the basis of it, and tried to change as much as he could but when he faltered he knew in his place there would be Dean.

There was a level of normalcy in his home now that Harry had never really felt before when he had been the only stable male influence in Jess and Harvey's lives. He knew at times he was too distant, he knew they needed more. It was one of the reasons he had settled so near Marc, knowing that being a big child himself, the kids would get enough of what they needed from his brother if they couldn't from him. Though Marc had been sufficient in that position, Harry knew he was the wrong kind of role model for them. Dean's arrival to the family had been a godsend. Responsible, protective, playful but with clear boundaries, Dean was everything Harry had needed in his own upbringing and he was glad to have him there for Jess and Harvey. Mindful of all of that he couldn't deny that, yes he did resist the idea of Dean branching out beyond the borders of their home. Jess may have been away at school and Harvey was in his senior year but there was a stability missing that he could feel, that they all could feel, when Dean wasn't there. Dean had, in of himself, become their home. If life were fiction, he'd be Mr. Belvedere.

"Yeah?" Harvey asked. He and Penny were busy building tacos.

"You decided to go from future major league baseball player to something unknown that might just involve ambulance chasing," she said everything very carefully, revealing that she'd been thinking it all over for a while.

"Yep."

She narrowed her eyes on him. "Do you think that was brave or risky?"

He sighed and said, "Who knows? It's what I want to do."

She smiled with a definitive nod as if he'd just confirmed lift-off. "I _love _that." At twelve going on thirteen, Penelope Garcia took after her dad more than anything. She was confident, outspoken, and to Dean's utter dismay she was becoming a little too much like him in that she was just about the biggest flirt this side of the Bay. The only thing preventing him from sending her to a convent was the buddy-like nature of her flirting. She was a confidence booster rather than a tease. She watched black and white classics over bad soap operas for her cues. In her heart she genuinely felt like she came from another time, somewhere in the past, and that feeling flowed through her like a natural current. She appreciated conscientious willfulness as a teenaged girl was often wont to do and seeing her big brother buck the popular trend for something out of the expected was affirming.

He saw the stars in her eyes behind her lenses. "I'm gonna be a lawyer, Penny, not a superhero. Our school specializes in making lawyers more than ball players to begin with. And last I checked, it's kinda the family business, well one of them, so I'm not exactly changing the world."

"Yeah, okay, but which would've been easier? For you, I mean," she asked, and it was the only question she had to ask. Staying on his path would have been simplest given his already cultivated skills and it would have held quite a bit of glory too. His new direction was the more difficult journey. The fact that she saw that was . . .

"I think Dad's right," he said with a grin. Yep, Harry Specter said it all the time.

"What?" She asked, blinking curiously behind her glasses.

"He says you're a genius."

"You needed to be told that? Really?" She asked with a half-grin that was so much like Dean's.

"God," he laughed. "My ego," he held a palm low, "your ego," he shot that hand upward. "That should be _impossible_."

"Well, I'm bigger on the inside."

Being a big brother had taken on new meaning for Harvey since Jessica left for Stanford. At school he was the only one left looking out for Penny and _boy_ could she get into trouble. The digital world was in ascent and her coterie of friends consisted primarily of guys who saw the future potential of computers and knew they would have to be primed just on the edge to take advantage of it. Penny could handle herself enough when it came to practical application and being Queen Bee (actual elected title) amongst them but she was easily wheedled out of code just by being nice and there was no way for Harve to make her _less _nice. Penny was who she was and he refused to try and alter her just for a proprietary string of commands.

Instead he tried Plan B: if he couldn't make her selfish, or at the least self-interested, then he had to be around when her group of friends all met in the computer lab during reading hour, under the guise of being tutored by his kid sister, just to stop the bleeding out of her generosity. His mere attendance stopped the majority of it (he was still Harvey Specter, a senior, Student Body President, and proficient in the language of '_I will kick your fucking_ _ass_') but unfortunately up was down for him when it came to computers as much as he was trying his best to catch up to where his dad had always wanted him to be. Too much got past him in that year and those months leading up to the earthquake. After the quake, however, a miracle occurred. Gus's school had been too heavily damaged and would have to undergo extensive reconstruction. Thomas Anderson had always appreciated the public school system for its social advantages (any academic losses he could focus on personally with Gus) but the schools in their area were too overcrowded with the overflow of students. There was a line that separated social advantage from sardine can and Tom could see which side of the line they were soon going to be operating on. It was then that Penny and Harvey's school was recommended as an alternative.

"But isn't Kierkegaard a cradle to the grave immersion school?" Tom asked when the suggestion was made.

"I see somebody's been reading the brochure," Dean replied. It was almost two weeks after the earthquake and the city was still recovering. Most of the houses in their neighborhood had suffered some minor damage but nothing compared to other parts of the Bay.

Tom felt caught. Confession was the only solution. "Gus asked Penny for one. He knows he can't go back to his school and now he's dead set on going with her."

"_But_—" Dean began. "I can hear a but somewhere in there."

"He's not used to that kind of thing. Gus might have missed the 'private' magic school bus a couple of years ago." He shrugged. "The brochure made it seem a little too posh."

Dean laughed. He couldn't help it. From an outsider's perspective he could see how the Academy would seem that way but from nearly a decade being a part of the administration and being a parent leader he knew that place so well inside and out that 'posh' was the last word he'd use to describe it. Maybe 'purgatory' would be the first.

"It's not a finishing school. They're not gonna learn how to drink tea with their pinkies in the air. Besides the ridiculous tuition, endless homework, and medieval reading lists, it's just a regular school."

"You're really selling it, Dean," Tom chuckled.

"Well, Gus wants to go and unless you want him sitting in some kid's lap just to fit in a classroom at a school four districts over, you'll send him, posh or not." Dean placed a mug of hot coffee in front of Tom as he busied himself around the kitchen. It was a Saturday morning which meant the kids slept in and Kathy and Harry were sleeping off their always long Friday nights at their respective offices. For Dean, Saturday morning was like most mornings where he got up before the sun, checked in on all the hunters he'd dispatched the night before, did his morning run, then weights and the medicine bag in the basement. As soon as he got out of the shower and had put a pot of coffee on (which generally woke Kathy and Harry up like clockwork) Tom would always be at the backdoor, also like clockwork. Rain or shine, Tom took his Saturday morning café with the adults of the Specter-Pearson-Garcia home before any of their children woke for the day.

Tom groaned and muttered, "Yeah, now you're actually selling it." He took a drink from his mug. God, Dean made excellent coffee.

"If he starts acting like the bad guy in a John Hughes movie I'll be the first to tell you," Dean assured him. "But I think we both know Gus'll be fine."

"You're right. I know you're right. It's just . . . I grew up in private schools. It wasn't pretty."

"Oh, the stories you could tell?" Dean asked with just a little trepidation.

"Let's just say I'm glad Gus is straight. Less to worry about."

Dean didn't ask. Tom wasn't ready to be asked. He might never be. Instead Dean made an observation—

"Family of old money but the first chance you got you joined the army."

"Ran as fast as I could," Tom admitted.

"Into a war zone?"

"You didn't know my family." As serious as that could have been said, Tom used it as a punch line. They shared a laugh.

"If anyone tries to mess with Gus, Penny'll be on it."

"Penny?" Tom asked, thinking they were joking again when he recalled, "Oh right, she did deck that clown." He looked up to Dean. "Whatever happened with him?"

Dean shrugged, "He _may_ have gotten a visit from an angry parent who _might _have broken all the bones in his grabby hand but that's just a rumor going around the school."

"Mmm," Tom said trying to hide equal parts of shock and satisfaction. "Is Kierkegaard prone to rumors of that kind?"

"That was the first and the last."

"See? Now I feel better sending him there." Tom held out his mug in a toast gesture.

Dean clanged his mug against Tom's and said, "Well, there we go."

* * *

"How was it?" Penny asked Gus in the corridor after his first block of classes.

"Half if that wasn't even English," Gus said, shell-shocked.

Penny bit her tongue and forced herself not to burst out laughing. "Daddy'll get you caught up when we get home."

"Dean knows Latin? He knows Greek?"

"Daddy knows _everything_."

From anyone else about anyone else, Gus would take that with a grain of salt but he took it at face value. If Dean could predict tremblers then heck with Latin. He looked down to his schedule. Lunch and then reading hour. "And 'reading hour' is when I meet your friends?"

"You're not going to lunch?"

"Guidance counselor."

"During lunch?"

He smiled, "Penny, it's either lunch or reading hour."

"Oh, right. Well, you can't not eat. You'll just meet the rest of the guys when you finish up with advisement."

"Rest of the guys?"

"Matt, Sebastian, Dmitri, and Shep. They never eat. You don't wanna get their habits."

"I feel like I already know them you talk about them so much."

"I hope you were listening," she said but it was almost a warning.

"They're jerks?"

"And I love 'em. But, yeah, the biggest jerks you'll ever meet." She then added confidentially, "Watch out for Shep."

The lunchroom was buzzing with activity. In the same gothic treatment as the rest of the school, the cafeteria was all stone and wood walls with hardwood floors. Long oak tables were set up in lines where different groups of students collected to sit and eat.

"Those are real forks," Gus said in amazement.

"You have to wonder what's better for the planet: the water needed to wash all of these or the plastic that goes into sporks."

"Are you writing a paper?"

"Recycling: The Last Debate."

"Snappy."

They approached a table that was a little more alive, mainly due to just one of its occupants, than any of the others. As Penny approached, everyone there calmed and all attention went to Gus.

"Hmm," a red-headed girl a year or so younger than Penny and Gus looked the stranger up and down. "_Definitely _not as cute as you, Queenie."

"Charlie, no flirting."

"Baby, tell me not to breathe."

"Charlie, no breathing."

"Right. In. The. Feels."

"Gus, this is Charlie, our junior flirt, Charlie, this is Gus."

"Say it right, Queenie," Charlie insisted.

Penny sighed. The protocols attached to being Queen. "Charlene Devereaux, August Anderson."

"Well, he'll need a nick. It's my turn, right?" Charlie asked. Gus thought she looked a little too excited.

"August is his name, Gus is his nick."

"But you call him that on the regular. That makes it a name, not a nick." Eleven year old Charlie looked to Gus and squinted. "If I have to be 'Charlie,' you better believe he's getting a handle too. Hmm—"

"Okay, you work that out," Penny, exasperated, turned to the rest of the group. "Quick intros now, longer ones after we get something to eat 'cause he's gotta get to advisement. Okay, so this is Abigail Sciuto, aka Abby, she's from New Orleans and is threatening to leave me." Penny only had the faintest of memories of her birth city of New Orleans but she did remember that she had loved it.

Abby who was too young to be wearing half the makeup she was wearing also sounded way too happy and chipper for the _kind _of makeup she was wearing. With heavy black eyeliner and dyed black hair, she bubbled up to Gus and threw her arms around him. "Never mind what Charlie said, you are cute. She just has eyes for Queenie."

"Watch out, Huggy," Charlie warned Gus, "Her uncle is the headmaster."

"I'm a kidnapped princess in a fairytale but see if I'm not going back home next school year," Abby said with resolve. "I love you guys but I want Bourbon Street."

"Abby's smart. _Really _smart and of course headmaster has to poke his finger in somebody else's life," Charlie said.

"Well, interference is fate," Penny said as if she were repeating Confucius.

"Aren't you all really smart?" Gus asked as an observation.

"There's smart and then there's genius," a boy of about ten said with a pronounced drawl. "I think we're all of a kind."

"And this is my brother Ashley," Abby said.

"Ashley?" Gus asked, looking to the little boy.

"We're southerners," Ashley said with a grimace. "Gone with the Wind and all that. Don't call me Ashley. My daddy don't even call me Ashley."

"He hates it," Charlie chimed in. "Perfect handle."

Ashley grumbled. Abby said, "He's always just been Luca, it's his middle name, but the club calls him 'Ash' just because."

"Because," Charlie interrupted with irritation, "that's just how the handles work."

"I really wanted to be 'Wednesday,'" Abby said to Gus with a happy light in her eyes. "You know, from the Addams Family? Abby's so boring. I'd settle for Gail even."

Ash added, "And I really wanted 'Dr. Badass.'"

"But," Charlie interjected, "once you suggest it it means you kinda like it which defeats the whole purpose. Nobody gets a nick they want. You kind of have to hate it for it to work. That's why it's your handle, harder to profile. I hate 'Charlie.' I mean, I'm a girl. A girl doesn't need a boy's name to differentiate her, right?"

"Um, right. So, what nick did you want?" Gus asked Charlie.

"Leia."

"Right."

"But unlike the other crybabies I accept the rules of the club and I use 'Charlie' _exclusively_. It's like rushing for a Greek house."

"At a Latin school?" Gus asked.

"Irony?"

Penny gestured to the final person in their group. "And last but not least, Camille Saroyan, aka Cam."

"You don't get one or you just hate 'Cam' that much?" Gus asked, holding out a hand to the older girl. She was probably seventeen and the eldest in their group.

"Nope, I don't get one. I'm the student advisor to the Computer Club, but not a card-carrying member. I can turn a computer on and that's about it."

"Student advisor?"

"_Spy_," Abby whispered conspiratorially. Cam playfully nudged her.

Penny explained, "Headmaster doesn't want Abby and Luca in a group setting with the guys without supervision."

Camille shrugged, "I get credit, he gets a spy."

"The guys? Oh, Sebastian, Dmitri, Matt, and Shep?" Gus asked.

"Yep," Penny said.

"And thank God Harvey's around on the regular or they'd wear me out," Camille said, looking harried just thinking of the four boys.

Charlie giggled. "You're thanking God for Harvey but not because of the guys."

Penny groaned. "Ew, he's my brother, Charlie."

Gus looked to Penny then to Camille, "Wait, you and Harvey?"

"And it's time for the babies to nosh," Camille said, shooing them to go join the line as Harvey entered the cafeteria and made a beeline over to her.

"Since when does Harvey have a—"

Penny looked like he was asking why the world wasn't flat. "Harvey and Cam have been together forever. They went to junior prom together."

"I've never seen her," Gus said, shocked.

"Her dad's in the Navy but her aunt lives here so she splits her time to go to school. She just got back from Okinawa, her little sister stayed with their mom and dad. Can you imagine spending the whole year in Okinawa?" Penny looked like she was on the cusp of a daydream. Penelope Garcia wanted to see the world.

"And the headmaster trusts her because?"

"Because her aunt is married to him?"

"Headmaster's _other _niece? Harvey's brave." He looked ahead of them to Abby and Luca. "So, they're all family. And Charlie?"

"Digital fanatic, all around genius, and she's got a crush on me."

"A real one?"

"She's eleven; all crushes are real at eleven," Penny shrugged with the sage words of an aged twelve year old.

Charlie poked in-between them, "Hey, Huggy, how about George?" She offered. "Pet him, hug him, squeeze him and call him George," she said as if to explain her thought process.

"How's that a nickname?" Gus protested.

"How's anything a nickname?"

Luca leaned in from in front and said, "Existential question."

"How about Huggy?" Gus offered. "You're getting used to calling me that."

"Well, if you're suggesting it then it's scratched off the list," Charlie rolled her eyes and grumbled.

"Oh, right. I have to hate it. Why, again?"

"Shep's idea. He's a little dark side, you know?" Charlie said.

"Okay . . ."

"Back to the drawing board," Charlie said, pouting.

"How is Queen Bee a nickname to hate?" Gus asked her.

"Queenie's our resident Pollyanna. She doesn't hate anything. Heck, we even tried _Pollyanna_."

"So you just picked 'Queen Bee' out of a hat?"

"Nah. She wanted 'Baby Girl' so 'Queenie' made the most sense."

Gus looked confused. "How does that even—"

"Well, what's diametrically opposite to 'Baby Girl?'?" Charlie asked as if it were obvious.

Gus looked to Penny putting one and two together before he got it. Right. "The Queen."

"_Of Hearts_. But the 'off with their heads' association didn't gravy with who she is so, Queen Bee. Station?"

"Station?" He asked.

"Gravy," Charlie nodded with a smile.

Gus turned to Penny and whispered, "English?"

"Latin school, remember?" She teased him.

"After school tutoring'll be great and all but I don't think it'll help unless Dean speaks Charlie's language."

"Have you met my dad?"

Gus chuckled and nodded. He could barely understand what Mr. Garcia was saying half the time. "_Gravy_."

"Oh! I know," Charlie squealed and spun around. "I got it. I'm awesome. Bow."

"Fred?" Gus teased.

"Laugh a minute. Nope. I dub thee halfway between August and Huggy and so you shall be known as '_Auggie_' in all the lands."

"Auggie? You wanna call me Auggie? I hate that."

"Perfect."

"No station, _Charles_," Gus said, needling her.

"Ohh, hit a nerve. Well then there we go August Anderson, you are now Auggie."

"Do I get a vote at all?" Gus asked the group in general. "Can we go back to George?"

"I still wanna be Dr. Badass," Luca sighed with a pout. Abby jabbed him to walk up.

Penny gently poked their new initiate and asked very quietly, "You really hate it?"

Gus dragged his feet and looked like any other preteen boy who had just been renamed against his will by an upstart eleven year old. He seemed to be grievously lamenting his fate but from just the corners of his mouth he cracked a small but self-satisfied smile her way and whispered, "No; I kinda like it."

She mirrored his clandestine grin and just ever so slightly nodded before also whispering, "Me too."

"So," Harvey said, sidling up next to Cam and nuzzling her neck as soon as the kids were out of earshot. "How's the hazing going?"

"Charlie's convinced she now has competition for Penny's heart," Cam said, giggling as he tickled her.

"Charlie's competing with Penny being straight."

"One obstacle she can understand at a time," Cam warned.

"Alright," he said, looking towards the lunch line. "Well, she's got nothing to worry about. Penny and Gus aren't like that."

"And you're sure?"

"Penny pretty much adopted him. She'd be playing matchmaker with Dean and Tom if—"

"_Obstacles_," Cam said with a nod. "Dean and Penny are stubbornly straight. Got it."

"Dean's a monk. I can't picture him with anybody, forget being straight. If he was a girl I'd think Penny was immaculately conceived." His words elicited a giggle-snort from his girlfriend. "What?"

"Monk? Dean's a notorious flirt. He doesn't even know when he's doing it. He's lucky he knows his boundaries or he'd be arrested by now."

"Penny's just like that but it doesn't mean anything. You know she hyperventilates when anybody flirts back."

Cam couldn't help chuckling. "She handles Charlie well enough."

Harvey hummed and arched a brow before saying, "Obstacles."

Cam leaned in and kissed him when an audible throat-clearing was heard. They both looked up to see Penny, Gus, and the rest of the Computer Club standing just over them.

"Ew, guys come on, this is where we eat," Penny said in protest.

Harvey and Camille nodded and separated, doing their best not to laugh.

* * *

"Guess who I just got a visit from?" Dave asked over a rare midday phone call. He knew and Dean knew there was no way Dean would be able to guess who just dropped in at his office in Quantico so he just said, "Art."

Dean frowned at that. Art Campbell, their generation's baby of the family, was supposed to be on a Navy warship in the Balkans not in Virginia. "I thought—"

"Yeah, apparently not," Dave said just before dropping his voice very low. "The kid just read me in."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait. What? And are you supposed to be telling me this?"

"He told me to pass the message onto you. He's getting on a plane right now and plans on stopping off at Harvelle's, then Singer's, and then you get an official visit."

"Art's a spook?" Dean asked, completely shocked. "And he's hitting the hubs? What the hell does the CIA want with the hubs?"

"Apparently we're a level of organization the Agency hadn't seen before," Dave tried not to sound too proud when he said that. "They can't just teach hunting at the Farm, obviously, so according to Art their assets have always been hunters they recruit. Art was recruited after some pirate ghost ship incident he and his crew had off the Libyan coast."

"Shit. Lemme guess: he was the only one not flipping the fuck out?"

"Yep. And that's kinda when the radar went up, especially after he taught his guys how to not get killed bloody. And like I always suspected somebody in this massive system actually _had_ been paying attention, and for a long time." Dave never assumed he was the lone wolf governmental entity aware of the supernatural. Demons, ghosts, monsters—they were centuries old, loud, and violent. Someone, somewhere along the way _had _to be taking notice even if it seemed like they weren't active players.

"It _would _be the Agency," Dean said, leaning back in the couch, a half-done meal plan in his lap. The way Dave told it, of any official government entity to document the weird and the strange the CIA was decades ahead of its nearest neighbors. It was also the last agency that would warn the public of all the dangers from things that went bump in the night. Hell, Dean didn't doubt that in his timeline the Agency had a file a mile long titled 'The Winchesters.' "So, he wants the hubs to what? Report to the hive mind?" Dean didn't like the idea of centralizing information like this.

"We keep our autonomy. We don't report in as long as we keep the world spinning on its axis. The second things start to wobble we're suppose to dial in. Don't ask me what their contingencies are, I can imagine them. Can you picture a full TAC team armed with rock salt MP5s? Jesus," he started laughing at the absurdity. "Well, he's under their . . . non-mundane affairs department."

"Tell me they don't call it that."

"The DSA. To everyone else in the building it's the Department of Special Affairs. Substitute 'special' for 'supernatural.'"

"Creative."

"He said once we start coordinating, the Agency can run interference for us. Issue IDs, get funds."

"Wow, never thought I'd get paid for this," Dean snarked. "Is there a 401(k)?"

"Funny. Ha. Jokes. Well, like everything the Agency does its all back routes. My packet came with SSNs we're supposed to use when applying for a credit card. The system will flag and expedite them. The IDs are blanks with instructions to alter or reproduce."

"I'm gonna need a Bedazzler next," Dean again snarked. Though, he did have a Bedazzler, well, it was Penny's and it was well used. Dean paused then and really thought about what Dave had just said. Social Security Numbers and a how-to ID kit? Stepping out on a ledge of uneasy question, Dean rattled off an SSN by memory, the first his dad had ever drilled into him.

Dave was quiet on the other end for a long moment before he finally said, "Between you and Missy we need to hit Vegas again."

A cold ran up the length of Dean's body. The origins of his childhood education came crashing down on him. It had been his dad who had taught him how to cut IDs and Bobby had provided pretty damn realistic badges to all the hunters under his hub. Now Dean realized those IDs and badges hadn't just been realistic, they'd been as real as it could get and of course provided for by Arthur fucking Campbell via the goddamn CIA.

"Did you tell John about this?" Dean asked, knowing someone would and knowing his dad would agree. How, he had no idea, but he would.

"John won't want to hear this from me. We just started being real again and I don't need a shitload of distrust to slap me dirty in the face," Dave said. Dean had to crack a smile at that though it pushed through a general discomfort. Dave had a way with words. It would come in handy when he got to writing his books. Dean had them all on the iPad.

"Actually," Dave continued, "you should probably do that once Art reads you in. You're probably the only person on earth outside his boys that John really trusts." Heh. Right.

Dean almost couldn't believe the conversation he was having. "You expect me to convince John Winchester to become a CIA asset?"

"You make it sound really mercenary, Dean. Technically, being actual members of the department, we'd be agents."

"Oh yeah, even better," the snark was on full force that morning. "A pay scale."

"He'll need it. Seriously," Dave said, his sudden shift in tone reflecting his words. "He's got two boys and he gets by on sharking pool but that won't work if somebody gets hurt or just, you know, needs to go to the dentist. Life costs, Dean. John, his boys, they need something."

_Fuck_. Dean had never seen his childhood as particularly stable but he escaped with all his teeth in great condition which said a lot given his diet growing up. His dad had always been there for him when aches and pains tried to keep him or Sam down. Dean had never questioned how they could pull names out of their asses, slap them on a number and a few days later a card would be in the mail. Actually living in the real world for the last ten years, knowing everything someone needed just to get by, it had naggingly not made sense to him. Stealing an identity also involved stealing a name. He couldn't just slap 'Jon Bon Jovi' to some random digits and expect a line of trust given from some mega bank or everybody would game the system the exact same way. He couldn't just say some random nine digits belonged to 'Sherlock Holmes' and not expect a rejection letter but rejection letters never came did they? No. Instead a card printed, 'Sherlock Holmes,' would arrive and damn, Mr. Holmes would seem to have an excellent credit score.

"Okay. I'll ask him," Dean said already knowing what his dad's response would be.

* * *

Wow. "Is this real life?" Gus asked walking out of advisement. Penny was just outside the door waiting for him. She looked expectantly to him. "He gave me three more classes. Over the weekend!"

"Oh. Well. Be glad it's not after school?"

"Are you serious right now?" He asked in a shocked but still weak voice. "He looked at my transcript and then talked to me like a first grader. If my dad hadn't—" he bit his lip when he was about to say 'been there for me' and was just glad he had been.

"You took the placement exam—what's he all twisted up about?" Penny asked, seeing how upset her Gus Gus was and taking it to heart.

"That was math and reading. My dad helped with science and history but I, _apparently_, 'have absolutely no foundation in the classics,'" he said, mimicking his counselor's prim voice.

Penny slouched knowing exactly what that meant. "Philosophy and Ethics."

"Three classes of it!"

"Sorry."

"Can I get that crash course in Greek and Latin now?" He dragged his feet. She rubbed his shoulder. Somehow, her doing that made him feel better. "How long was I in there?"

"We've got a few minutes left in reading hour but are you up for it?"

He imagined four older and more aggressive versions of Charlie butting heads with him and he just shrugged. "Best time to get run over is when you're already deflated."

Penny grinned. "And they say you need to take Philosophy."

The Computer Club room took residence in one of the Apple II computer labs. The room was windowless and the air conditioner was on full blast despite it being November. The blackboard was covered with commands in BASIC and there was maroon Berber carpet on the floor.

The computers and desks were in three main lengths of six rows, computers back to back making students able to peer over their screens to those across from them. The middle row was fully occupied with those faces from the lunchroom and four new ones. Everyone turned to Her Majesty and the newly Christened _Auggie_. The younger kids looked expectantly between Auggie and the four boys while Harvey and Cam gave the guys a look that was roughly equivalent to 'you're two seconds from a Moe Greene Special.'

The boys rose.

"So. This is Auggie," the tallest of the boys said. He was a dusty blonde with messy curls. He had the hint of an accent Gus couldn't exactly place.

"Auggie," Penny began, obliged to use his nickname, "This is Sebastian." The boy bristled a little at the name and Gus realized the truth in Charlie's insistence: even these guys didn't like their nicks. It was a comfort and he felt a little better already in the knowledge that he actually had a name he liked.

"He's shorter than you said," Sebastian said with a dismissive sigh but he did it in French so Gus had no idea what he said.

"Maybe you got taller?" Penny offered, also in French and always employing that diplomatic tone that no one could argue with.

"Secrets don't make friends," Charlie interjected. She didn't speak French.

"Your dad works for NASA, huh?" One of the other boys asked. He was also tall but missed Sebastian by half an inch. His hair was so dark brown it was almost jet black and it was up in a retro style, kinda like Elvis only not so theatrical. He was tanned like summer vacation had just ended or he commuted from Malibu. Abby tracked him with a strongly held blush.

"Yeah," Gus said, finally being invited to speak. "At Ames." There was a faint look of respect there. He might be a jerk as Penny warned but probably not the worst of the group.

"This is Matt," Penny said. "Watch out," she cautioned Gus with a smile. "When he's not here he's at the gym and he'll drag you along just because he can."

Matt held up his hands in a defensive move but it came with an unabashed smile. "As charged."

"She told you we were assholes, didn't she?" The next guy asked with an almost irrepressible smile. Gus had to crack up at that. Now that was an ice breaker. He immediately knew this was Dmitri. Penny had described him as a borderline Tourette's case but safe.

"Are you?" Gus challenged.

"Well, duh, but I just wanted confirmation," he said. He had shoulder length brown hair with lighter highlights and his face was incongruous in a way Gus couldn't say. Dmitri's eyes were a little too bright, too entertained, and his smile held a joke only he knew but where that would have caused Gus to back away from him if they had met on a bus, somehow hearing him just spout off unvarnished statements told Gus that Dmitri was more or less harmless.

"Dmitri—" Penny began almost pleading with him. Everyone started laughing. Everyone except the last boy standing. Shep, the tactical leader of the group. Charlie had called him, 'a little darkside.' He was the shortest of the four and a bit thicker but he seemed to take a person all in with just a squint of his eyes and they were powerfully intelligent eyes with just a little darkness behind them. While the other boys had been speaking, Gus had felt Shep's eyes on him the entire time, watching and analyzing him.

"Well, I'd love to say hello but the bell's gonna ring in a minute," Shep said in an accent that was definitely British but where exactly Gus couldn't say. "So, you have a minute," he said gesturing to the teacher's computer station at the front of the room.

"To do what?" Gus asked. The other kids quickly rose from where they sat and sped over, knowing exactly what was going on.

"Shep—" Penny began, trying to intervene.

"Your Majesty," Shep began with no derision or irony in his voice. For whatever faults he had, he respected Penelope completely. "I understand your motivations in this—you'd invite a stray cat to join us if you thought it would benefit from having a handful of friends but let me not have to remind you that he has to earn his name."

Why was it that the higher up you got in a hierarchy, the more rules you had to deal with? Penny looked to Gus and said, "They want to see what you can do." She looked to Shep. "Because obviously my word doesn't mean anything."

"Not your word, Queenie, but your heart's something of a liability," he lightly said. Shep turned to Gus and gestured to the computer. Taking his cue, Gus sat at the machine. Courtesy of Charlie the screen came on to reveal the game 'Oregon Trail.'

"Get as far as you can before the bell rings and we'll see how you stack up," Shep said.

"Seriously?" Gus asked.

"Wasting your own time," Shep sighed.

Gus began. Screen after screen zoomed by as he made choice after choice leading him to his destination.

"Whoa," Ash said as the flickers of light from the quickly changing screens hit his face. "He's almost as fast as Queenie."

"Almost," Charlie said, counting the flashes. "Not there though."

"I'm not a miracle worker," Gus said with a smirk. He was sure it was physically impossible for anyone human to be faster on Oregon Trail than Penelope Garcia.

A second before the bell rang he reached Oregon. Cheers and looks were exchanged between the members of the small group. When the high score page came up there were three names visible in the following order: seven Queens, a Shep, an Auggie, and another Shep.

Gus turned to Shep and there was a look on the older boy's face he didn't at all expect: _pride_. Shep pointed to the ninth name on the screen and came in close to whisper into his ear. "That's you from this point on. Not Gus, not August. This is you. Auggie. Look around the room. Those are the faces of people who also hate the names they were given but do you know what's the absolute truth? The only truth that will ever matter? At this exact moment they all wish they could carve that name they hate where yours is right now." He pulled away and shrugged. "The human condition."

Gus looked to the screen and then to the others. He did see what Shep was talking about but he almost wish he hadn't. He saw it in everyone except for Harvey and Cam who couldn't give a rat's ass. And yeah, except for Penny. The look Penny wore wasn't of envious admiration but why should it be? She owned seven slots of perfect scores. No, the look Penny wore was also pride but of a different flavor from Shep's. Hers was the face of encouragement, the face that said, 'I want to see you at number one, even if that's where I was.'

The next few years suddenly stretched out long before him and Gus knew the only way to get through with his head on straight was with her right next to him. He could already tell Shep was temptation and the three boys closest to him were already members of the Fallen. Gus now had two entities present in his school life that were firmly perched on his shoulders: Penny and Shep, angel and devil. Who he'd be as a person when he left Kierkegaard would be partially determined by those two influences. He damn well hoped he would always make the right choice between them.

* * *

Late that night when Harvey and Penny were sleeping but just before Kathy and Harry returned to their respective offices, Dean received a call on his attic line. It was Art calling, informing Dean that they'd just got into the airport and that they would be at his place in the hour.

"Who's with you?" Dean asked.

"My partner. Unlike every other department, they don't really allow us out in the field alone," Arthur said in something of a consternated tone. Either the DSA was a bureaucratic hellhole like every other government agency after the Cold War or Art just didn't like his partner. Occam's Razor, Dean figured it would be the first: Arthur Campbell had it in him to be a diplomat. He might not like someone but you'd never know it.

They arrived just before 1am. Dean was out on the porch to greet them. He extended himself, making sure they were both human and he saved introductions until they were shuttled into the kitchen.

"You're used to the cloak and dagger," Art's partner commented with no hidden suspicion. She was blonde and young, probably Jess's age but missing from her eyes was Jess's nineteen year old innocence. This was a woman who'd obviously been a hunter for a very long time, maybe for her entire life like he'd been. Dean had no idea that CIA were recruited before they were even old enough to drink but the Agency, as he understood it from Dave, was built more on assets for information gathering than on a large policing force as the FBI was. If a person had a skill the Agency wanted, they would bring them in despite their past or inclinations. It was the ultimate definition of 'ends justify the means.'

"I'm not used to waking my kids up in the middle of the night," Dean replied. There was something about what he said that clearly threw her a little. Her face was an inscrutable cloud of confusion, irritation, bitterness, resentment, _relief_, pity and ultimately resignation.

"They don't know what you do?" She asked.

"The eldest does. She's not here though."

Another curious look. "The file says she's at Stanford."

"File's right."

"So she doesn't hunt?"

"Not exactly a major at Stanford," Dean said, trying not to bite because he understood her then, the basis of her questions. It was all the questions he ever had of Sam when he had declared that he wanted to go to school and quit the life. How could anyone know what was out there and just ignore it? Dean had grown up a lot since then, Lisa and Ben being his first teachers. The urge to save people was precariously balanced against the urge to keep those you love as far away from the life as possible.

She sized him up and he saw her mentally grading him exactly as he would in her situation. He passed the exam.

Extending her hand she introduced herself, "Joan. Joan Jareau."

_Jareau_. Nothing was a coincidence.

"Joan Jareau," Dean said, hiding the recognition from his face as he took her offered hand. "JJ?"

She grinned at that. "Um, no. When I was a kid," she began and the old man in him corrected her by saying to himself that she was still a kid. "But that nickname belongs to one of my nieces now."

Dean filed that away.

"And as the dust settles," Art interjected with a smile. They both looked to him. "What? I was about to put on popcorn if that went on any longer."

Joan seemed to bristle and just quietly muttered, "Navy."

Art liked to tease her, Dean could tell. Their meeting was short, to the point. Dean received a similar packet to the one Dave described and he was authorized to bring other hunters in under his authority. Dean knew he wouldn't need any of the packet materials for himself. He could crack any database and clone any ID. The first aided by the tablet, the second he'd learned from his dad. And in acknowledging that Dean knew the true owner of the packet would be his dad.

Yep. Wax on. Wax off.

As they were leaving, Dean asked Joan at the door, "How'd you get into all this?"

"The Agency or the life?" She asked. He shrugged. "Both. Right. Well, my parents were, their parents were. You know."

"So, that niece of yours?" He casually offered without seeming to be trying to wheedle information.

"No," and it was said with a dismissive laugh. "My brother left and never looked back. His kids are gonna have a picket fence and cheerleading practice. The whole nine."

"Why'd he leave?"

"A job went balls up and at the end of a very long night all he had to show for it was half of our dad."

"I'm so sorry—"

She held up a hand. "I didn't tell you to get condolence. Just," she sighed, "just make sure you come home to your kids, Dean. One foot in and one out is playing it safe," she took another breath, "until it isn't."

Arthur and Joan left and Dean just kept hearing her voice over and over in his head.

* * *

It was just after dawn a week later. John Winchester sat there and just stared at the contents of the packet. For six years he'd been scrambling to keep his head above the water and now he had something that would take some of the pressure off. John had been in the habit of doing bi-weekly check-ins with Dean and he was invited over for Thanksgiving with the boys so Dean could hand him the materials. As Dean would have remembered such a holiday he knew something would happen to keep Dean and Sammy away.

"Annie wants them over for the holiday. I'm not gonna hear the end of it. I'll come alone," John said. Dean was inclined to tell John to stay with his boys, spend time with them, but he didn't. He knew John would come, weighing that time spent with his boys around a turkey with making sure they had the tools to help them later on. John wouldn't see how important one holiday would be to them if it meant they could live long enough to see a lot more of them. Dean didn't want to hear John's reasons. He didn't want to hear John's incomprehension at the possibility existing where his boys would trade in one holiday with him than dozens without. Dean didn't want to hear it because Dean was a parent now too and he would make the same choices his dad would.

"Okay," was all he could say, declining to stand up for the children he and Sammy were and instead standing up for the men in impossible situations they would too soon become.

John looked at the scattered items on the table between them up in the attic apartment. "With all this stuff you'd think they'd include directions how to counterfeit bills," he huffed in astonishment.

"With all the plastic you can get it's pretty much the same thing."

John nodded, "Right." He then glanced to Dean. "And you trust them?"

"Kathy trusts Art and Art trusts Joan. That's as far as I'll go. Right now, just be careful, rotate the numbers and do what you've been doing," Dean said. John looked to him in question. "Keep moving."

John understood him. He put the materials together and accepted them.

"So," Dean said. "When was the last time you had something home cooked?"

With a grin John asked, "When was the last time I was here?"

"Didn't you just come from Vegas?"

"Bill can't cook and Annie doesn't try. Spencer has a personal relationship with the Chinese takeout guy."

Of course he did. Dean had even met their takeout guy a couple of times when they were little. His name was Lou. He had even read it on the tablet from the night JJ had been attacked by the white eyes. What was it Spencer had told Penelope? '_I've ordered my share of takeout growing up_.'

"Well, we've got a full house on their way so I'd better get cracking," Dean said getting up to start his day.

"Who's coming?" John asked.

"Dave, the new wife, and Missy. The neighbors across the way are coming too. Harvey's girlfriend, her cousins—"

John cut him off knowing this list would go on. "And somehow you plan on making enough food in one day to feed everybody?"

Dean frowned at his dad and just said, "It's not gonna take the whole day."

"You're a machine," John called out to him as he exited the attic for the stairs.

"I'm a machine," Dean replied with a laugh.

* * *

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	29. Fall the Walls of Jericho

**Chapter Twenty Nine**

**Fall the Walls of Jericho  
**

Being assistant coach to Kierkegaard Academy's baseball team was generally not a taxing job on Dean. He helped the kids with their warm ups, their form, he organized practices, and so on. As the school's focus was less on athletics than on academics, there wasn't much in terms of expectations for the team. Sure, there were a few bright spots individually, Harvey being one, but the rigorous scholastic demands generally kept success on the field just outside their grasp until that spring when either luck, the fates, or the stars just seemed to coalesce around them. They made it to the State Finals.

Harvey was conflicted.

"What's wrong?" Dean asked on the Friday afternoon before the big game. They were tossing the ball around out back. It was the end of May and Dean had the backyard blooming with purple orchids. Harvey was taking Cam to senior prom the following week and he was determined to fill their limo with her favorites.

"Why does he want me to start?" Harvey questioned of his coach. A noticeable change from a few months prior was that now Harve no longer held his questions in a limbo of uncertainty.

"Because you pitched no hitters the last two games?" Dean offered as an obvious solution.

"I know, but, the other guys actually want to get seen, you know? I don't care."

"Did you tell him that?"

"That's why I'm—" he shook his head. "Half of me says, 'Harve, you don't want it, you don't need it,' and the other half says, 'they need you.' But really sorting through that all I can say is, for the first one, 'you're on a team; who cares what you want,' and for the second, 'you're on a team, stop thinking they can't do it without you,' you know?"

Dean worked his way through that spaghetti monster of logic. "If you think they need you then its over. You already know you don't want it as bad as they do so they're pretty much screwed. That answers both questions, right?" Dean asked.

Harvey blinked. "Wha—wait—how—"

"So, you kinda just have to say they _don't _need you, then you can do whatever you have to, and then you won't have to feel guilty for starting."

Harvey narrowed his eyes on Dean and murmured, "You've been reading Nietzsche again."

"Was it? Or, wait, _Kant_?" Dean said with a frown, honestly not sure. He and Harvey had spent eons prepping for finals. Dean hadn't seen so many German names in one book since Penny's mid-term paper on WWII.

"Kant's arguably the nicer one," Harvey said.

It all came back to him as Dean said, "Ohh, right."

The telephone in the kitchen began to ring. They heard Penny zipping in from the living room where she and Auggie were spending their Friday afternoon designing an RPG.

"Because 'paladin' just sounds cooler!" She called out to her design partner before picking up the phone. "Castle of Wonder and Delights," she answered.

Outside, Harvey resigned himself to whatever the next day would bring. "Coach'll figure it out."

"God grant me the serenity?" Dean began.

"To know when I am well and truly confused," Harvey ended.

"Daddy!" Penny called from the open back door. She looked panicked. "That was Uncle John."

* * *

"I called Kathy and left a message with Denise. Closed door client meeting, do not disturb, whatever—" Dean said on the phone, waiting for his flight to board.

"What? She should have let you through," Harry said from his office on the other end of the line.

"I don't know how much of an emergency it is," Dean said which was not exactly true. John wouldn't call for backup from two hundred and fifty miles away if it wasn't serious. All he told Penny before the line went dead was the town he was in. From the plain looks of it, the job John was on was going south fast. Dean had quickly weighed the benefits of driving versus his anxiety with flying but when a three hour drive could become a one hour flight then all fear was thrown out. He wouldn't have considered it post 9/11 but in 1990 people (especially LEOs as his ID defined him) could go through airport security faster than they could change a tire.

"You're getting on a plane at a second's notice. Of course it's an emergency," Harry said.

"I just wanted to tell her where I was headed but making it bigger than it is would just make her want to come with me."

"Is it dangerous?"

Dean had to select his words with care. "I don't think so," he lied with enough cushion to cover him. "And not knowing—"

"Yeah." Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. "And you'll be okay?"

"John's just got himself tangled up. It'll be fine," his assurance was calming but completely fabricated. Dean had no idea if it would be fine. He didn't know his own future and how it was twined around his dad's past. All he knew for sure was that eventually he managed to get a message back to Marie regarding Kathy and Harry's first meeting. That could be managed multiple ways, sending a message back with Michael being the most obvious. Beyond that, he didn't know what his future in his past was. _Fine _wouldn't be how he would describe the current situation. "Harvey's driving Penny and Gus back. I gave them money for takeout. I told him to call you and Kathy to see what you wanted. I'm gonna get back before Harvey's game. I have to be there for him, I know that—"

"Dean," Harry started, "He'll be okay."

"Huh?"

"John. Harvey too but right now I'm talking about John. He'll be fine. I don't think I've ever heard you so worried before."

Dean knew he'd been hiding his anxiety but somehow Harry had dug right through him. Well, why not? Harry Specter was an expert at shielding the things that could expose his heart. It took one to know one.

"Yeah," Dean said, wanting the subject to melt away to nothing as fast as possible. "I'll call when I get in."

"You didn't say where you were headed."

"Right, sorry. The plane's going into Fresno. I reserved a car there. The town's a little more than hour out from there. Jericho." And saying it made Dean feel like his life was suddenly in a different gear. Almost like he'd returned to the beginning. Jericho. It was his and Sam's last known location for their dad when Dean had Shanghaied Sam from Stanford to go looking for him. That was still fifteen years away. Why would John be there now? What the hell was it about that town that twice it would seem like his dad would face unknown danger? And if he was there now, what the fuck was it about that town that would encourage his dad to go back in a decade and a half?

Dean could still see the abandoned motel room John Winchester had vacated in such a hurry. He'd left everything behind: his journal, his notes, so much research . . . it had been like nothing Dean had ever seen from him. And what had the case even been? A Woman in White? At the time it hadn't connected but later on he and Sam figured John had encountered a much bigger fish in Jericho than he'd anticipated and had to do a quick 180° to save himself. But . . . his dad could handle pissant demons. He'd never just drop everything and run like that. John had said he'd gotten a line on Yellow Eyes but still, he'd at least pack up his stuff. It was just sloppy not to. Especially his journal; it had everything in it. As a witness to the original construction and assembly of the journal, Dean knew it wasn't an exaggeration to honestly say it had _everything _in it. It was the crib sheet to the entire Campbell library.

What the hell had John found in Jericho that would force him to leave that behind?

No. The question was in the wrong linear direction. What the hell had John found _now _that was not only kicking his ass but clearly leaving such an impression that he would feel encouraged to go back and visit in fifteen years?

"Jericho?" Harry asked. The announcement for Dean's flight was made over the sound system. "An hour out of Fresno? Hell, that's Marc's development."

Dean wasn't sure he heard that right. "What?"

"How he overleveraged the S&L. He bought and rebuilt the town."

"The whole town?"

"Took a project that big to sink the family business. It was an old mining village but after the second war it was totally abandoned. He built Jericho right on top of the old foundations."

"Yeah. Big project," Dean muttered lost in his thoughts. This was wrong. This was _very _wrong. Marc built Jericho? It had been the project he'd wanted to leave for Harvey. He had even wanted to name it after his nephew. Clearly, the new owners had other plans. Dean knew nothing was coincidental here but he couldn't hash out the importance of this new information until he found out the importance of Jericho.

Boarding was called again.

"I have to go," Dean said. They said their goodbyes before Dean hung up. He slung his overnight bag over his shoulder and made his way to the gate, his brain screaming at him the entire flight.

* * *

"The hell you mean there're no cars?" Dean demanded of the short, stocky, and persnickety fellow behind the desk. "I reserved a car."

"I know, Mr. Garcia, and I am so sorry but there was an error in the computer—" he said gesturing to said computer.

"I don't wanna hear this."

"There's a big convention in for the weekend and we didn't—"

Rather than waste time reaming the guy out, Dean just gave him a half wave 'see ya,' and turned around. That wasn't the only rental place in Fresno—

"Oh, sir—Sir—Mr. Garcia—" The clerk went around the desk and tried to stop him from leaving. As Dean was in a comfortable old pair of faded blue jeans, a grey Henley, and a blue flannel shirt with his old Samsonite overnighter slung over his shoulder, not half so much deference would have been shown him by the man following him had Dean not initially approached the counter, pulling out his driver's license to pick up a car he had expected to be there and instead unknowingly flashed his Platinum AMEX and his badge. "There aren't any cars available anywhere else around the airport—"

Dean turned to him with a glare that could fry stars. The man froze and fumbled his words a little. Dean wasn't even seeing him at that moment. All he was really thinking was had he known this was going to be such a hassle he would have taken the Charger and driven in.

"Sorry—I—I've been coordinating the last hour with the other lots and every where's bone dry."

"You've gotta be shitting me," he swore mostly to himself.

"Again, I am so sorry."

"You really like saying that."

"If maybe you could take a cab to your hotel and tomorrow I'll see if I can send a car over to you—"

"If I was staying at a hotel that _might _be an option," Dean growled. What the hell was he gonna do without any wheels?

"I am so—"

Dean held up his hand and quieted another 'sorry' from escaping the other man's lips. The man hurried out in front of Dean and raised his hand like a skycap and hailed a cab. Dean was about to protest the very idea of bringing a civilian cab driver into what was most assuredly a hairy boogey-laden situation when a long, black checkered car drove up emblazoned with the words, 'Black Cat Car Service.'

"Seriously?" Dean asked to the cosmos.

The clerk opened the passenger door and gestured to Dean for his bag.

"No, I'm cool," he blankly said, bending a little and looking towards the driver. It was a man Dean had never seen before. The last black cat that had crossed his path had been luck or providence (okay, providence). Would it hit twice? He peered in a little further and caught sight of the driver's ID. He then looked to the driver who simply grinned with a surety of knowing that implied secret keeping.

Dean slid into the back of the cab. There was something so familiar about that backseat, something so comfortable. He felt . . . _good _there. The clerk shut the door and hit the roof. A moment later the cab was navigating out of the terminal.

"So," the driver began. "Where are we headed?" His accent was a mixture of French and British that was too cosmopolitan to pinpoint.

"Are we gonna play games? 'Cause I'm not in the mood."

"Ah, yes, your father. Right," the driver nodded. "You would be preoccupied with that."

"Who are you?" Dean asked. He wasn't Michael. Dean had sent prayers up to Michael to help his dad that went unanswered hours ago.

The driver tapped the photo ID that was posted on the dash.

"Seriously?" Dean repeated. "_Really _not subtle."

The driver shrugged. "You gave it to me. Said it was the only reason you got into the cab at all."

Closing his eyes, Dean realized he was once again locked in a temporal loop. "I send you here."

"And here I am, not a minute late."

"Is that all I do in the past? Send cars for people?" He asked himself feeling ridiculously frustrated. First he sent Kathy to Harry and now this. "I'm not marrying you," he grumbled, knowing the parallels would end there.

The driver screwed up his face like he'd visualized something no one should ever witness and reproached, "Mother, please." That chipped at Dean's anger and left awkward discomfort and quiet. They remained in silence for a while.

"When do we meet?" Dean asked.

"So you can close the paradox? You must have a laundry list of them by now. Almost two hundred years ago. Same vessel, you'll recognize me."

"New Orleans?" So, he survives to time travel. That was . . . comforting.

"The one and only."

"So, what do I call you?" Dean asked the question in another way but received the same reply: the driver tapped the ID. "I'm not calling you '_Easter_,' that's not a name, it's a holiday."

"I couldn't very well be called 'Resurrection Sunday,' or 'End of Passover.' It's 'Clyde Easter.' I don't know why you gave me a name you dislike."

"Why 'Clyde?'" Dean asked.

"Bonnie _and_," he replied. "Something about some FBI agent calling you and Sam that and that would be a kind of password for you to know, '_yes, John Connor sent me,_' or something. You know you overload with pop trivia when you speak, right?"

"Who's your '_Bonnie'_?" Dean asked, ignoring the question, knowing he didn't give people nicknames, especially doubles, with no reason.

"Noémi. At least she was. I was tasked to be her family line's genius."

"Why?"

"Demonic possession sometimes has a degenerative effect. Her line didn't have very much latent power and so, not a lot of self-protection. Well, that is until this generation of course. My new '_Bonnie' _as you call her is almost done with high school and doesn't realize just how much power she'll be able to throw around soon enough."

Dean recalled his daughter's namesake, his older sister as Marie's memories recognized her, on the night they picked Penelope up. Where Marie welded the electric power of lightning, and Kitty held a fiery inferno, Noémi, the eldest le Blanc sister, carried an ice cold storm in her fingers.

"What's her name? And don't say '_Bonnie_,'" Dean said. If past was prologue he knew the descendent of a certain raven-haired French beauty would be connected to this entire thing in some way already. When God Himself was orchestrating details, shock or surprise had no place.

"Spoilers?" Clyde asked with a grin. Clearly he had already had this conversation with Dean. Not taking the bait, Dean waited. "Well, that's deflating. Emily Prentiss."

Another brick in the wall. Nearly the entire team was accounted for. He could just imagine Penny's petrified face in twenty years if Derek wound up a long lost cousin, or her aunt. It was now too much to deny. Chuck built Penny and Spencer's team for some purpose. Dean was sure whoever hadn't been accounted for simply hadn't been revealed yet. David was a Campbell, Emily was a le Blanc, and JJ came from at least two generations of hunters. What was the endgame? What was over the horizon that was so powerful they would need all hands on deck? Aeshma? Please. Dean was pretty sure he could turn that little bitch into jerky. No, it was something else, something bigger, and something he, Sam, and Spencer couldn't face down alone. The idea of that possibility horrified him.

"Gah." He just said it out loud and then slouched.

Clyde frowned. "Problem?"

"Fuck everything!" Dean snapped. A sudden streak of lightning pierced the night sky.

Clyde looked through the rearview mirror and said with a hum, "Mothe—" Another shock of lightning was then almost immediately followed by thunder. A chai tea appeared in Dean's lap.

"What the—"

"You seem stressed."

Dean's anger, once again vanished. He closed his eyes and breathed, getting his head back in the game. He drank the tea. "You know in a bunch of places the word for 'tea' is 'chai?' So _chai tea _is a really stupid name for something," Dean said referencing the foodie inside of him as he finished.

"Are you missing Spencer or something?"

Dean didn't bother to delve into how much he missed both Spencer and Sam. "Just talking names. What's yours?" Dean asked a third time as the empty cup vanished. "Your real name."

"And here we are," Clyde said as they passed the _Jericho _town limits sign. Something about the car changed at that instant but it was too dark on that country road to tell what exactly happened.

"What—" Dean exclaimed. An hour drive had taken a few minutes. Not that he should have been surprised though—if he had wanted to, Clyde could have blinked them right to his dad. Hell, he could have just beamed John right to his living room in San Francisco. The thought finally caused Dean to frown.

"Why—"

"And you finally ask the question," Clyde said. "You can't see it but each and every tree is warded. Not full angel-proofing; there are still some errors in how they're laid but whoever is doing it is good. Instead of blocking us it's like falling head first into a mud pit. No sane angel would step into this place; it would wreak havoc between vessel and grace."

"So you don't count as a sane angel?"

"I count as an angel who is used to disruptions between vessel and grace."

"You mean the occasional attack of humanness?" Dean guessed.

"Just so."

"How?"

"Yes, well that's why I didn't want to tell you my name before now. I'm . . . clipped at the moment."

"Fallen?"

"More like . . . _prodigal son_. My rebellions were the antics of a child compared to those who fell and so my wings are just . . . clipped. You told me to tell you to think about what Castiel went through, only more punitive, whatever that means." Right. Dean remembered what an almost powerless Cas had been like.

"So, you're more human than angel?"

"No," he protested. "Perhaps at the beginning but I'm well past the fifty percent mark. I'm not completely without resource. Unfortunately with the wards I can't access even that. This place is a node to us. A blank spot on the map."

"So when you say 'clipped' you mean your grace—"

"Is diminished and the El was removed from my name. I have to do good works to earn it back." Dean recalled the conversation Cas and Spencer had about angelic names and the -el that ended them. Theophory.

"How long have you been at it?"

"Redemption you mean? Well, the last decent party I ever went to was in Gomorrah." Clyde then smiled as if remembering some exciting times.

"Nothing like progress," Dean said. Great. He'd sent himself a powerless angel. Well, it explained why Michael stayed away—could he get through and operate at full strength in all of the angel-proofing? Maybe in his true vessel, John Winchester, but John was inside the lion's cage and Michael was out. If Michael came and was powerless then he risked capture and that alone would be fifty shades of bad.

The lion's cage. Jericho was surrounded by Enochian sigils. It was completely invisible to Heaven. Jericho, the town that Marc built. Kathy had asked Dean that first day they met why he had sent her to Harry. What was it about Harry that was so special? Maybe Dean hadn't sent her to Harry for _Harry _but as a way, through him, to get to Marc. Dean had only seen one creature that hadn't been an angel angel-proof anything and that creature had been a demon. Was Marc Specter doing business or somehow working for demons?

The car stopped. It was pitch dark save from some pale moonlight.

"He's in there," Clyde said, gesturing to a warehouse, maybe an old meat packing plant. It had clearly been from the previous generation of Jericho as it was ancient and worn down.

"How do you know?" Dean asked as he took out his mini Maglite and reached into his overnight bag. He pulled out a small arsenal.

"You told me to follow hi—" Clyde began before he spun around in his seat. "How on Earth did you get that on a plane?"

"I'm a G-man. I have privileges."

"What you are is a telekinetic. What do you need them for?"

"Yeah, lemme pull a full-on Carrie in front of my dad."

"The alternative to saving face is of course dying a horrendous death."

Dean rolled his eyes. _Angels_. He looked to Clyde and asked, "What are we up against?"

"We?" He asked incredulously. He gestured to Dean, "Amazon," he gestured to himself, "Dead weight. When you're done I'll join you."

"You're very helpful," Dean said, his tone indicating the opposite.

"Oh," Clyde looked at Dean's gear, "All of these and what's that supposed to do? Leave that."

"Serious?"

"I'm nothing if not helpful," Clyde said, bringing it right back to him.

Dean adjusted his inventory and exited the cab. In his preoccupation over Chuck's plan and John's danger, Dean hadn't realized the plaintively obvious until it was staring him in the face. "What the—" Somehow the cab had gone from checkered to glossy black somewhere along the drive. No wonder it had felt so right inside. The Impala.

"You stole my car?" Dean whispered in tight anger.

"Not yours yet, Mother," Clyde observed. It was perfectly hidden amongst the shadows. They were surrounded by trees on all sides save the dirt road behind. "I have his things in the trunk."

"Don't get comfortable," Dean warned.

Leaning back like a contented cat, Clyde said, "Too late." Dean was tempted to whip out the Missouri side of the family on him. Instead a grumbling above the cloud cover was heard. Clyde sat up looking sufficiently chastised.

"Name," Dean demanded.

With a sigh, Clyde looked up to Dean and introduced himself for the second time in a lifetime, "Balthazar."

"How you gonna know when it's gone green light in there?" Dean asked.

"One one-thousand. Two one-thousand," Balthazar began to count.

"For fuck's sake," Dean exhaled and looked down to his watch before silently taking over the count as he walked up to the ramshackle building. "Three one-thousand."

* * *

Zombies.

Not the full of rage but still human-looking type he'd become accustomed to when Sioux Falls had their revenant problem but the Thriller-extra kind.

"Five one-th—" Dean froze for half a moment. There were dozens of them. It was like a cemetery decided to go on vacation and left its residents behind. Cas had said dead bodies couldn't be animated in the zombie-like way. When he'd explained why demons needed fresh bodies to inhabit he also discounted the idea of zombieism. Death/Michael/Grandpa Joe had resurrected the dead in Sioux Falls so from an angelic point of view, Dean supposed Cas informed his opinion based in experience but . . . there was no discounting what these things were.

"Holy—"

They all turned to him. From the dim light coming in from the open door behind him, their rotted eyes seemed to inexplicably glow.

Shit.

"John?!" Dean screamed as he pumped his shot gun. He heard a muffled sound off to the back of the warehouse, a wall blocking it. Dean kept that location pinned to a map he quickly drew in his mind.

"Okay," he said as a horde bore down towards him. "Six one-thousand."

Silver buckshot loaded, Dean fired off a round and infused the shot with a force of power that amplified the blast up to the roar of thunder. The shot shredded the lead creature and Dean carried the silver bearings through rotted flesh to rotted flesh, a streak of metallic glint sparkling through the darkness. Dean let off round after round like this, each shot taking out a line of the walking dead. He was careful to stop the pellets from penetrating the wall behind them where his dad was.

Click.

_Fuck_.

He was out. He scrambled to load regular ammo but after the first two shots he realized his gun might as well have been shooting Silly String. Yeah, Balthazar told him to load more of the silver and Dean hadn't been stubborn about it but you only expect to need so much of one type of ammo when you pack an unknown monster-hunt Go bag.

He tossed the shotgun to the ground and pulled his machete, facing the remaining twenty or so zombies that were coming towards him. Hand to hand was not looking like a winning strategy to tell the truth.

_Problem_: He needed silver.

_Observation_: What silver he had was embedded in twice-dead corpses on the ground.

_Fact_: "What you are is a telekinetic."

_Solution_: . . . He actually had all the silver he needed.

He re-sheathed the blade and with the nearest zombie just seconds away from clawing distance, he extended his hands, palms down, to the fallen bodies. Curling his fingers into fists, Dean used the motion as a mirroring guide. As his grip formed the silver pellets tore out of the downed creatures and rose as if impossibly magnetized. Quickly drawing his hands into a fluid figure 8 gesture, the gore-covered silver whipped around the open space in a blur of reflective grey as it caught the isolated streams of moonlight. They moved in a whirr, cutting the air with a high-pitched tone and slicing through bodies like the blades of a blender. All that remained in the air after half a minute was a thick black and dark red plume of atomized ichor. Dean pulled his shirt over his face as the smell of it hit him.

"Oh, God that's nasty." He hadn't gone grave digging in years and he was more used to the smell of almond croissants than corpses. He waved his hand and a strong breeze whipped in from the door behind him and dispersed the cloud and odor. It was only the thought of needing to get to his dad that stopped him from taking a minute to collect his breath and maybe gag just a bit. "John?" Dean called, stepping over body after body. Some of these people were dressed for a different century. Most should have been bone or dust by then instead they ranged from seeming a few days old to at most a week dead. Something had brought these people back, almost resurrecting them as Cas had resurrected him, only he hadn't come back hungry for brains and with a fatal case of dermatitis.

"Dean—" From just beyond the room came the barely breathed voice of John Winchester.

There were deep gouges in the wood around the iron door as bloody fingernails from dozens of fingers were embedded in the splintered frame. The door itself looked as if it would survive a nuclear event. Dean tried the door but it was locked.

"John—"

"Yeah," his dad coughed and the sound was wet. A panic level Dean hadn't reached yet was immediately surpassed. "I'd let you in but . . . no way I'm moving."

"You're hurt?" Dean asked, feeling stupid for asking the obvious but he wasn't thinking clearly as he looked over the lock and analyzed the best way to pick it.

"Nah," John said with a weak laugh, "just don't like you."

The John he knew only made jokes when he was worried. It's why Dean, as a child, never knew his dad as even possessing a sense of humor; he stowed all his anxiety away when he was around his boys.

Without caring about the consequences, Dean placed his hand over the lock and pushed against it. Pressure rapidly built behind his palm and stripped the interior of the lock as if a screwdriver and a mallet had just gone on a field day. The sound of the metal screaming filled the empty room but the bodies on the ground prevented too much bounce back. The lock broke and the door lurched. Dean grabbed the handle and opened it.

The relatively smaller room beyond the main must have been a meat locker or a smoking room as an array of hooks hung from the low ceiling. Dark old stains told stories in the wood. New stains told others. A trail of fresh blood led from the door to the far corner where John, as pale as the zombies who had tried to break into the room, sat on the floor, his pistol in his right hand and his small intestines pressed against the left.

The word, 'dad' was just on Dean's lips but his shock took all speech from him. He was at his side before he realized he'd moved.

"Don't—" John breathed, "don't chew me out. Not yet," he asked with just a faint smile shrouding his fear. Dean frowned at that for a moment before a horrible realization hit him: part of John's fear really was that Dean was gonna ream him for dropping the ball in some way. It was in that moment, from the dim light that seemed clear as the brightest day, that his dad was looking at him the same exact way he had always looked at his dad when he was positive he'd failed him. To his dad, Dean had _become _his dad.

"Hush up, John," Dean said, not even hearing what he said or how he'd said it until it echoed back to him and all he heard was vintage John Winchester. John nodded and kept quiet and a flood of guilt larger than the sides of the Red Sea loomed over Dean.

"I mean, breathe," he amended, inspecting the wound. Dean suddenly had flashes of Jo bleeding out in the same exact position in Carthage, Missouri. God, Jo. She was what? Five now? Bill and Ellen had even sent out Christmas cards. He had to pull himself out of the rabbit hole of memories because all that followed was the realization that like Jo, his dad's injury was just as fatal.

"I'm glad the boys are at Singer's," John said, biting back the pain. "That goddamn horde overran the house I was in. Barely managed to get that call out before I had to jump ship."

There was no way they'd make it half a mile with John in that condition.

"If it was them and not you that got through that door, I was gonna eat one of these," he whispered, gesturing to the pistol. Dean took the gun from him without a word. With a heavy sigh, John nodded as much as he could. "I've seen these before, Dean," he said of the wound. "Guys younger than me didn't last long with something like this."

"You're not gonna die," Dean said knowing it was true but also now knowing that if he had never been here, his dad would have died in Jericho, California. Angels couldn't have saved him here. Chuck had sent the only person who could have made sure John would survive this so he could go pick his boys up from Sioux Falls.

Dean looked up to the ceiling, his expression unreadable. He then glanced to his watch and murmured, "Yadda yadda one-thousand."

Balthazar poked his head into the small room. "It's like the plagues of Egypt hit all at once out here."

John frowned to the newcomer and then to Dean.

"Never mind him," Dean said before he took a breath. "I need you to trust me, okay?" John nodded. "Okay." Dean placed his hand over his dad's, both holding the bloody gash. Dean thought to himself that would be to date the most extensive healing he had ever attempted. He had choices: he could do a transference and turn a square acre of Jericho into dry kindling or he could create energy in the same way the stars had been created. Either way would leave his dad healed but Dean knew he'd personally be left out of commission for a while no matter which he chose. He decided against the Fern Gully flower show and selected a straight transfer of energy.

As when Cas healed someone, the action came easily. A moment of concentration and then the blink of an eye. Like with the goldfish, it was over and done as quickly as it began but unlike with the goldfish, where he felt he'd been hit with a shopping cart, now he felt like an 18 wheeler had done pirouettes in his cranium. He felt arms on him, settling him against the wall and he looked up to see Balthazar. He tasted blood on his tongue and fought to keep himself together as violent coughs felt like they were tearing him apart from within.

"You really have to get better at this," Balthazar said and Dean could see the worry and concern in his face.

"No shit." Dean couldn't contain his sarcasm as a wave of 'everything hurts and I'm dying' washed over him. He looked over to John. He was out. "Did it work?" He asked, his entire body shivering with the feel of sudden cold.

"As much as it could before it killed you. His body will do the rest."

"Is he in pain?" Dean asked as he recalled the hours in agony he'd spent after Sam had 'healed' him at Spencer's apartment.

Balthazar seemed exasperated, mumbling, "Not as much as you," before examining John. "Good color. No, you got him over the worst bit." The angel leaned over to help Dean up when Dean protested.

"Take him first," he insisted. Balthazar rolled his eyes but obeyed, raising John up and taking him in a fireman's carry out of the warehouse.

Alone in the dark, Dean drew in closer to himself to stave off the chill.

"What do You want me to do here?" He quietly asked the Being he knew was listening. Dean's carefully divided worlds were starting to melt together. Joan's warning was still as clear as a bell in his mind. There were so many threads that had seemed scattered and unrelated before that were now starting to join together and it terrified him. It absolutely terrified him. Dean had been comfortable enough in the past, knowing the future and what it would hold, but he realized he really didn't know anything. Ignoring his ignorance had been easy before, there had been nothing presented that had changed what he knew as real. Okay, so his dad and Bobby weren't as fringe as they had seemed but it wasn't like the Agency would ever confirm their existence, it wasn't like knowing that truth could affect him in his timeline. But the possibility that these creatures came from a town linked to his day job—that the Specter side of his three-sided household wasn't just a passive member, that Marc could bring a shitload of pain into Dean's family led him to contemplate the rest. How all these connections were tied to Penny, Spencer, and Dave and the rest of their team.

Jericho. The first fissure in Dean's happy mundane life occurred because of Jericho and Marc's involvement with it. The kids had to uproot their lives and their sense of stability was shaken. The first fissure in his family, in the way he and Sam understood the world and their father's role in their lives occurred in Jericho when in 2005 John went MIA and everything went topsy in an already crazy life.

There was an arm around him and his legs tried to support him as he was being led out of the building.

"Wait," he breathed as Balthazar opened the passenger door to the Impala.

"If you think you're driving—" the angel began to protest.

Dean hushed him and turned to the dry tomb they'd just left. The trees around them were dead and looked like standing driftwood. He didn't know if he'd overextend himself doing it but Dean knew they couldn't leave anything behind. Both he and his dad had bled in there and whatever power could bring back the long dead could do some nasty things to them with their blood. He also didn't know if those zombies were successes or failures but leaving them behind wasn't an option either.

Bone would mostly disintegrate at over 1400° but too much would be left behind. No. Simple fire wasn't enough.

A streak of light flashed across the sky. A sharp pain clawed at the back of Dean's eyes but he kept his focus. Another flash lit up the sky.

"What are you doing?" Balthazar asked, watching as the strikes became more and more rapid and began to coalesce over the warehouse. "Stop—" he said, turning to Dean. "It's too much too soon."

Pressure collected and a thick feeling of static overlaid them. The air sang with tension. The wind whipped up around them and the dry leaves from the newly dead trees blew in a chaotic cloud. Dean knew he shouldn't be doing that, he knew the exertion of that much power would be too much on a normal day much less after what he'd just done but nearly seven years before he'd watched his mother die, and that had been twice in his lifetime. Now he'd nearly watched his father die a third time. Balthazar would never understand that feeling. His Father would never be taken from him. Whatever Dean was under his skin would also never die. None of the angels could comprehend what it was to lose a parent. Dean had nearly felt it for the fifth time that night but in fifteen years it would be unavoidable. His mother, his father, those three months where he'd lost his brother for the second time . . . Jo, Ellen . . . all the people he had mourned and would mourn . . . Kathy and Harry. A never-ending cycle of death and loss and he was angry.

"Please," Balthazar begged as he watched blood pour from Dean's ears and also over his lips but his eyes . . . the angel had to avert his glance as the force and power behind the look nearly burned a hole through his vessel.

_A lamb, looking as if it had been slain_. . .

The fury of Heaven roared in a tunnel fifty feet in diameter down the center of the warehouse. A blast of energy pulsated over and around them wiping out another hectare of trees. The smell of ash and burnt meat was fleeting before being replaced by the toxic smell of ozone. In a moment it was over and the only evidence left of the warehouse was a molten hot puddle where that old iron door had been.

Dean's legs buckled and Balthazar caught him. The angel sighed. He placed an unconscious Dean into the car and muttered, "Hell hath no fury." He turned back to the scorched earth with marvel. At least this time it wasn't a flood. "And to think, Mother . . ." he said as he got into the driver's seat, "Between you, Sam, and Spencer, you're the sweet and gentle one."

* * *

Dean woke up for the first time in ten years in a roadside motel, at least that's what the rough sheets and slightly stale air told him it was but he couldn't be sure. Blinking, he tried to clear his vision but everything stayed blurred. His throat felt like course grit sandpaper. He needed to use the toilet like his life depended on it. He turned to the window and saw no glow behind the shades. It was still night. He didn't know when but whatever it was, he could still get back home in time for Harvey's game . . . once everything stopped looking like he was wearing beer goggles.

"What time is it?" He asked to a roughly human-shaped figure that was sitting at the foot of his bed. As much as he narrowed his eyes he couldn't really tell who it was but from the approximately blonde top he was almost sure it wasn't his dad.

"You don't need a clock, Dean, you need a calendar," Balthazar corrected. He placed a bottle of water into Dean's hand. The bottle opening ripped his dry lips but he didn't care. He didn't even seem to register what Balthazar had just said.

Choking a little from drinking too fast, Dean looked around to see if he could make out any other humanoid shapes. "Where is he?"

"Payphone out at the front desk. Checking in with, well, you."

"He's okay?"

"You just woke up and he's making a long distance but you're questioning if he's alright?"

"Jesus Christ, he's my dad. Can I ask?"

"How's your vision?"

"Why?"

Mimicking him, Balthazar simply said, "Jesus Christ, can't I ask?"

Dean let out a sigh and just leaned back. "Blurred."

Balthazar nodded as if he'd expected it. "Well, at least by the time I meet you it would have corrected," he quietly said.

"What?"

"What was that about not wanting to pull a full-on Carrie in front of your father?" The angel asked with an edge of frustration. "You nearly killed yourself tossing around all of that power. Father sent you back here for a reason and you just—" he shrugged. "Why?"

"A: zombies. B: a shitload of blood left behind. C: I was pissed," he shook his head. "And, yeah He sent me back to do what I just did, okay? John wasn't supposed to die and I wasn't about to leave special voodoo ingredients behind. Got it?"

"This isn't me just getting on your ass about this. You can't do that again, not like that. If you even attempt another healing anytime soon you're . . ." he didn't finish. "Dean, you've been out of commission two days now, next time who knows if you'll wake up in the same year."

A jolt suddenly snapped Dean up. "Harvey's game—" two days? Penny must have been in a full-out panic. He moved to jump out of the bed when Balthazar put his hands on his shoulders.

"Is that all you can think about? Is that all you care about?"

Dean couldn't fight him. De-powered angels were still stronger than he was on his best days. "You don't want me to worry about my dad or my kids but I'm supposed to piss myself because what? I survived. The worst that happened is I see as well as I do after one too many Jose Cuervos. Really? I'm not that guy; I'm not gonna be that guy, not again. Last time I was him I opened the first seal to Armageddon, okay?" He gestured to his eyes, "I can deal with this."

How could you argue with someone when they lay that sort of thing right out there? Balthazar nodded. "Okay."

"Alright. Now I have to get home—"

"Stop, just, you really want them to see you like this? The game's over," he said. Dean couldn't make out the hesitation in his eyes as he added, "And they won."

"What? Really?"

"Yes. So, don't worry. John and I have been in contact with Katherine. They know you're out of commission. Just try and rest."

They won. Dean smiled. They won. God, he wished he'd been there but he didn't feel so bad knowing that Harvey and the team got through in the end.

"Harvey, did he get to start?" Dean asked.

Again there was a visible hesitation that Dean didn't see. "Yes. He did."

Dean smiled even wider. That kid. Dean sat up but trembled as he did, his arms shaking.

"You're like a whack-a-mole, just lay down."

Dean gestured to himself, "The human needs the bathroom."

"Oh, right." Balthazar helped him up. "I'm working on my navigation around the whole human body system. I cleaned you up well enough and made sure you didn't make a mess of yourself—"

Dean held up his hand, "Just stop talking." At the bathroom door Dean held him at bay. "I can handle the rest." He locked the door.

"You weren't all this puritanical back in the day," Balthazar said.

"I hope you mean humans," Dean replied from behind the bathroom door, hoping an incarnation of his hadn't been partying in Sodom . . . not that he was against it, but what was the point without the memories, you know?

"Oh, not you in particular. If I'd been aware of you back then I'd worry you could be anyone. I would have been far more dutiful, like Castiel. It's actually a horrifying prospect."

"Thanks?"

"Consider going to a bacchanal with one of your parents and tell me how that flies."

Dean cringed. He shook his head. "Why do you call me that? It feels . . . weird. Like, I don't know."

"Well, thank you. That makes a person feel very secure," Balthazar said with a mischievous grin.

"Yeah, I've scarred you for life," Dean rolled his eyes. "Work out the traumatic childhood memories somewhere else; I'm serious." He looked to himself in the mirror and from what he could make out he was beat up with brass knuckles. Yeah, Balthazar was right: the kids couldn't see him like this. Hell, Penny wouldn't sleep for days just watching over him.

"Angels aren't living, in that we're not mortal, but we can die and we were born, so the spirit of life has a hand in our existence. That's you, last I checked. I first met you as Marie and though the youngest, you were the matriarch of your clan. So, I've called you that for a while. Everything's a spirit. This is my face as much as that's yours. When I see you, I see . . . you, not '_Dean_.'"

"There we go," Dean said as he rummaged for a toothbrush before finally finding a new plastic-wrapped one.

"What?"

"And here I am wasting my time with 'Dean' problems, right? Dean's dad, Dean's kids. That about the size of it?"

Balthazar realized the truth of it and felt ashamed. It was a rare feeling. "I'm sorry."

"S'okay. Mommy's remarried, got herself a new family, and little Clyde's jealous," Dean chuckled.

Balthazar simply exhaled before commenting, "Now I've got a complex."

Dean was halfway through his mouth when he contemplated Aeshma and his actions through time. He had been one of the angels in God's throne room. He would have known this alternate connection and still he. . .

If he had eaten anything the last two days it would all have come up in the sink. He wanted to consider alternatives that didn't make it half so bad, as bad as it was. He wanted to compare it to Apsara being married to Immanuel in one life and then being mother and daughter in the next. He wanted what Balthazar had said about everyone being a creature of the spirit to somehow nullify that specific way in which he'd been targeted but somehow it didn't. Aeshma had tracked the spirit of life through the epochs in the effort to build himself a vessel he could then use to destroy that spirit.

"Dean?"

The fatigue of the last few days was hitting him harder than he thought it would when he first got up. He finished up at the sink and slogged to the door. He figured he could use a shower but he wasn't sure he could stay upright much longer.

"You look worse," Balthazar observed, helping him to the bed and regaining his position at the foot of it.

"Charmer, you." Dean curled up under the covers, wanting to block the world out. "What'd you tell John?"

"About myself?"

"Yeah. Cover story."

"Interpol."

"He believed that?"

"The CIA doesn't employ foreign citizens and my American accent is Montana circa 1870. Not a good look."

That was true. Dean was glad he gave himself a U.S. birth certificate when he finally got around to forging what he needed when he first started working for Harry. His 'raised in Veracruz' back story still worked given everyone knew he was part of the le Blanc clan but the papers made everything so much easier. Hell, if Bruce Lee could be born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, Dean Garcia could track a slightly similar path.

Dean smirked. "Clyde, you were a cowboy?"

"Shut up, Mother."

The door handle turned with the opening of the lock and John Winchester entered the room. Dean couldn't see the warning look Balthazar shot John or the resigned look of agreement John sent back.

"Awake?" John asked.

"Yeah," Dean replied, turning towards him. He was a tall, dark shadow. Dean rubbed his eyes but it didn't help.

John settled in the bed opposite. "How you feeling?"

"Fine," Dean lied.

"Don't listen to him," Balthazar interjected. "He can barely see you right now." Dean kicked him though he wasn't strong enough to make it more than a symbolic, 'shut the fuck up,' gesture. "Overstressed himself," Balthazar ignored him. "He's lucky he isn't blind."

"But I'll be fine," Dean said, throwing a dirty look at the angel. He turned to John, "You didn't have to stay." Though he couldn't see the, 'you're kidding, right?' look John tossed him, he could feel it.

"Of course I had to stay. I was giving myself last rites in there and now I'm fine without a scar to show for it? Yeah, I had to stay." He sighed. "Why didn't you tell me you could do that?"

Dean gestured to himself and shrugged, "Not exactly battle-ready."

John couldn't help letting out a small chuff. "Right." Everyone on Mary's side of the family had some secret they kept close to the vest he'd just thought Dean had told him everything. Considering the condition Dean was in after displaying that secret, John could see why he kept it to himself. That kind of power in the field? It would be great for whomever Dean was partnered with but it would probably leave him dead before his first month on the job was up. Dean had run to John on the thinnest of threads, to help him in a situation he'd been wholly unprepared for and he'd nearly died saving him. And that job had just been a simple salt and burn that had spiraled out of control. Yeah, John could see why Dean headed a hub and stayed out of the field.

"Thank you," John said.

"You don't—"

"Dean, I'm just the widower of one of your cousins. You didn't have to help me in any if this—"

"John, just—" Dean held up his hand with guilt raging through him and John fell silent. Damn, it felt so weird when his dad did that and yet again even more guilt followed. "You're welcome. It's done. Okay?"

"Okay."

Balthazar stood and pointed to Dean, "Mr. Unconscious could probably use some food?"

Dean frowned at the idea of eating.

"Pie?" The angel offered.

Dean was a little more receptive. Balthazar pointed to John, "Same as last night?" Receiving confirmation, Balthazar exited the motel room leaving father and son alone.

"Last night?" Dean repeated with a laugh. "You two besties or what?"

"He's—" John shrugged. "Lively."

"Oh, Christ."

"Not that bad. Knows you pretty well. Better than I do."

"Not possible," Dean absently said as he closed his eyes to stave off a building headache. He couldn't see his dad's reaction to what he'd said. It was visible as a sense of acknowledgement and pride. "What did Kathy say? I gotta call Penny soon as I can talk without sounding half dead."

"They're fine," John lied. It was a genetic skill that ran in the family.

Dean nodded at that. "Dean and Sammy?" He asked, no longer feeling odd about asking about himself and Sam.

"Bobby's letting them stay up, eat pizza, watch movies, and he pretty much tells me to go fuck myself every time I tell him I didn't leave them with him so he can just ignore training them."

"And you keep on leaving them with him," Dean observed.

John almost helplessly shrugged. "When else do they get to just be kids?"

"You're a big softie, John."

"I'm an idiot. They need the training more than they need pizza and movies."

"Dean needs those movies," he said of himself but it was only faintly a joke. Movies were how Dean escaped when he was a kid.

John grinned. "The kid's Rain Man." Dean hadn't heard that in so long. A depressive wave of childhood memories was going to sink him if he didn't get out from the undertow.

"At least tell Singer he's playing good cop in all this," he suggested. Dean had always wished his dad and Bobby had a better relationship than they did. They both wanted the same thing: for Dean and Sammy to survive into adulthood, they just had different ways of doing it. Bobby wanted the boys to have as normal a life as possible and John knew there was no such thing as normal for them anymore. Dean didn't know if there were halves or a middle ground in their situation but the way he saw it Dean and Sammy had two parents who split time with them and they were always fighting over how to raise them. John would always get last say no matter what so it was imperative that he recognize his boys needed their downtime.

"And give him the satisfaction? My ass."

"Real adult, John," Dean said, shaking his head.

"Honestly . . . I wish they didn't have to do any of it."

"I know."

"How the hell'd you avoid it?"

"You mean not training my kids? Staying out of the life? Well, as much as I can, anyway," he said, neither forgetting his present condition or his nighttime occupation.

"Yeah."

"I saw what the life did to my family," Dean said, almost glad he couldn't make out the clarity in his father's features. "It took my mom, took my dad," he then thought about Sam getting stabbed in the back and that picture becoming Sam falling into the Hell pit. "Almost took my brother."

He could hear his mother's words echoing to him and through him from almost two decades ago when they first met in Lawrence and he absently repeated her words as the images of all his dead family, from his grandparents to Sam, flashed thought his vision, "The worst thing I can think of? The very worst thing? Is for my children to be raised into this like I was."

Dean pictured Penny's life growing up as a hunter and he imagined her getting hard, losing her infinite brightness. He thought of Kathy and Jess and imagined them ending as Jo and Ellen had. If Harvey had ever lost the people he loved, he'd hide away everything he was and become someone like Gordon Walker. And Harry? Thrust into whatever his brother might be involved in? As distant as he already was he'd isolate himself, like Rufus, and no one could reach him ever again. No, that couldn't be their life.

He looked up to John. For the first time since the very beginning John's resolve seemed to falter. His boys had already lost their mom and grandparents and Annie had told him the origin of Mary's deal: that he had died in '73 and she brought him back. How much could his boys go through before the children John wanted to save became men who had lives they didn't want to live?

Sammy still didn't know exactly what John did but he questioned the way they lived and he questioned the training. Sam didn't have one memory of Mary so when he started fighting he wouldn't have a reason he could really hold onto. John couldn't tell him all of it was to save him—that the demon was after Sammy. Not being able to say that, to instead make the story all about revenge . . . John couldn't imagine what the consequences if his reticence could be. Instead he held on tight to Sam, knowing what the future might bring.

And then there was Dean. That spark of life that had been there when he was little was long gone. He saw Mary die; he knew the impossibility of it. Getting him to speak much less speak about what he saw had taken a very long time. The life had already changed Dean. He always smiled to keep Sammy happy but he was always sad. That wasn't a sustainable way of being. Eventually, one day, and John feared soon, Dean would just stop pretending and there would be no smiles left in their family.

"It's different with Dean and Sammy," Dean said, only hearing the silence, not seeing the devastation on John's face. "You're not choosing for them. They'll believe that for a while, they'll blame you, don't think for a second they won't, but eventually they'll realize why you're doing this." Yeah, years after you die and Lucifer goes gung-ho for Sam, but none of that needed saying.

Almost as if he had to be reminded of that point, John said, "You're right. Hell, growing up my life was pretty much the most normal thing you could imagine and here I am anyway so I guess the life chooses you, right?"

"Yeah," Dean said as he heard his Aunt Diana say almost the exact same thing to Sam about Spencer. "So, where will you go now?"

"Back to the boys; you know, touch base with sanity for a minute. Then. . ." He got quiet.

"What?" Dean asked.

John didn't know how to say this to Dean, he was after all Mary's family, but he was also the best friend he had. "Back in January . . . I was in Windom, Minnesota on a job. There was this girl, a nurse at the hospital—"

Dean knew exactly who John was talking about. As John's friend he was curious but as his son, hearing his dad talk about being with a woman who wasn't his mom made the conversation just a little awkward as much as he tried to hide it.

"She's pregnant," John said as if it were the first time he'd ever said it out loud. "Says the baby's mine."

"I'm pretty sure you know he is," Dean said, figuring his father's hesitation likely didn't stem from his opinion of Kate Milligan's honesty.

"He?" John asked. Dean shrugged. "Thought you weren't one of the family psychics?" John questioned but there wasn't an accusation in it. He'd known Dean for too long to suspect he had an ability akin to Missy. His present condition was submitted as exhibit A.

"God wouldn't give you a daughter, John Winchester. Your head would explode on your shoulders," Dean said and he knew it was probably the literal truth.

John chuckled. "Yeah." He rubbed at his jaw. "Dean and Sammy, they're in this. I can't change that but maybe—" he shrugged and looked away. "Maybe I can keep one of my kids out of this goddamn mess." His voice was quiet, hopeful.

It was only then, after everything that had been said that night and done the last few years that Dean understood why John had been incognito most of Adam's life. "You wanna protect him," he whispered.

"Maybe he can have what your kids have, you know? A normal childhood? Baseball games? Maybe the life can just skip past one of them, right?" Dean closed his eyes. It physically hurt him to consider what next to say and so he said nothing. Adam. The life didn't pass him over, did it? He got his baseball game, he got the hope of college, but in the end he was killed by monsters. All of John's three boys would be taken in some way but in that moment, in that motel, he still had something that looked like hope, didn't he?

John could feel Dean's silence far more than he was hearing it. He wasn't sure why it gave him a greater sense of dread then anything he'd ever felt before. "I'm gonna go wash up," John said as he rose from the bed. He grabbed a change of clothes from his bag and got into the shower.

Dean tried to sleep but his thoughts now hovered over the idea of kids and how he'd never been so long out of contact with Penny. Weekly communications with Jess was expected and during summer when Harvey was at ball camp he'd go radio silent for days but even when Penny went to computer camp in the summer, a morning and afternoon call was obligatory. He needed to talk to her.

Getting out of the room wasn't difficult as architectural shapes were easy to make out. Making his way along the rows of rooms was alright as long as he kept a hand on the wall and over the doors. The neon light over the main building made the rest a cake walk. The phone was a door less booth and was the first thing in the vestibule. It was unoccupied. The best thing about payphones in the early '90s was the fact that one quarter could connect you anywhere for a decent amount of time.

"Hello?"

"Jess?"

"Dean, oh my God, are you okay?" Clearly the report of his death had been greatly exaggerated.

"I'm fine. Why aren't you at school? You have finals this week."

"Oh . . . I came down for Harvey's game," she said and Dean noticed how suddenly careful she got with her words. She was lawyering up.

"That was on Saturday."

"Tomorrow's just Reading Day, no tests—"

"Jess, what's going on?"

Apparently the lying gene skipped her generation. "I had to stay with Penny."

"Why?"

"Don't freak. Promise you won't. Mama said you had to stay where you were and rest, so, just do that, okay?"

"Jessica Lourdes Pearson—" Dean had only a handful of opportunities to use her full name but each time came with a lengthy term of being grounded. He didn't care that she was a grown woman.

"They went to pick Harvey up at the hospital."

"What? Why is Harvey at the hospital?"

"At the game, he was in the box and a ball went foul. Clipped him pretty bad, Dean. Cracked his collar and dislocated his shoulder."

"What?!" He wasn't sure he was having real thoughts after hearing that. "I—I'm coming home—"

"You can't—"

"Jess, I'm coming home," he said with finality. There was a sudden pressure at the back of his head and then nothing.

"Jessica?" Balthazar said into the telephone, having caught it from Dean's limp fingers.

"Mr. Easter?"

"He'll be staying. Have a good night, dear." He hung up the telephone. He looked to Dean who was lying unconscious in his arms and just sighed. "Whack-a-mole."

* * *

Marcus Specter drove through the heavy tree cover, over dirt roads, to a cordoned off site in the middle of the woods. The sun was bright in that part of the forest seeing as no trees for about half a mile had any leaves remaining on them. In the center of the space was a huge char mark.

Black-eyed workers were being directed to and fro by a man in an expensive black suit. Marc immediately recognized the man as the person who had summoned him. As the red-eyed woman had described herself as being 'in acquisitions,' she had transferred control of Marc's contract to a subordinate of hers who was tasked with the everyday details of life in '_meatsuitopia' _as she had called it. She had a pretty healthy distaste for people.

"You'll like your new boss," she'd said the day SpecterSoft met its new CEO. The board was now occupied by old friends with new-colored eyes that would make the vote non-controversial. "He's pretty much the same as your old boss."

"I don't work for you," Marc had protested but to her it was a familiar refrain. They both knew she owned him.

She stepped aside and gestured to the door of his office. "Then leave," she encouraged. He didn't move. "Oh." That sound was all she had to make but it was audible evidence of her possession.

Specter Savings and Loan was reincorporated as Niveus Investments. "Why 'Niveus?'" Marc had asked her when she told him to file the documents for the change.

"You do realize that _Specter_ means _phantom_, right? Not exactly a shot of confidence when people want to invest their money. Niveus on the other hand is Latin for 'white.' As close to 'specter' as you can get without the ghostly association, don't you think?

There was a knock at the door.

Marc shook out of the memory of the first day he'd been introduced to his new employer. "What happened?" He asked as he emerged from his car. The scorch would have led him to think fire if it hadn't been so perfectly even. It was more like a crop circle.

"They're still trying to figure it out," his boss said. "Of course they want to say it was the celestials but I keep having to remind them that's not _possible_," he pointedly said to the demons near him.

"Celestials?" Marc asked.

"Angels. But I _personally _angel-proofed the town."

"Angels?" Marc asked in amazement.

"Really? You're shocked? Hello, demons—" he pointed to the others. "Ergo, _angels_."

His boss didn't like when he fell too far behind in understanding so he tried to keep up. "Alright. If it wasn't angels . . . ?" Marc felt ridiculous having that conversation but he then remembered who he was having the conversation with.

"Working theory is hunters but we're still looking for evidence of that. In the meantime, five miles in that direction we have a vacated cemetery and the residents are just _gone_. One plus one equals bonfire."

"Hunters?"

"Call them Special Forces if that helps. They hunt supernatural things. An empty graveyard _might _qualify but we've no idea what happened."

Five miles in that . . . "The graveyard's by the plant?"

"Exactly."

"I don't think I—"

"There was a bit of a spill last week. Might have gotten to the water table. The water towers for town are clean but some product may have made its way to the graves."

"You never told me what you were making at the plant. Are you saying it did something to the bodies?"

"Why do you think I called you, Marcus? It's about time we settled your relationship to the company." He looked to his collection of workers. "Since it seems everyone else is a pack of fools!" Everyone cringed. He turned back to Marc. "We need to branch out. Diversify just in case we can expect more visitors. We can't simply have one plant and expect it to survive this," he gestured to the destruction.

"You want to spread this," he pointed to the dead trees and scorched land, "to other towns?"

"Of course. That is the goal of Jericho." He said it plainly and Marc balked at that. "Oh, do I have to do this again? Should I send an interoffice memo outlining that we do shit like this?"

"I can't—"

"I've heard it before. All of it. You can, you will. Done."

Marc looked down and away. His hands were shaking. He put them into his pockets. "You built Jericho to—"

"It's a stomping ground. A test site."

"What are you testing?"

"A honey trap. Souls are power and we're playing a zero sum game. The more that go upstairs the less that go down."

"You shouldn't be having an issue with that. The world's not packed with saints," Marc said, clearly speaking from personal experience.

"Oh, that's not how it works. People have to sell their souls or be _particularly _nasty to get into hell. Most people are just mean and selfish rather than wicked, merciless, or evil. And then there was that whole crucifixion and resurrection thing along with the theft of the keys to Hell two thousand years ago that effectively bottlenecked the influx."

"So, you want more deals?"

His boss made an '_eh' _sound. "People are generally leery of making deals if they know about them at all. It's not a product we can really do a thirty second spot for. Like colonoscopies, do it when you have to but there's not much to sell. No, deals are the more assured but slower way to fill our ranks and there's a fight coming up soon. We need you little Energizer bunnies downstairs and in the process we need to keep as many as possible from fueling the fires of Heaven."

"So, what are you building in Jericho?"

"Wickedness. Malice. Bitter conflict. We're breaking the connection between soul and body. Do you know what people are like without their souls, Marc?"

He gulped. "You're building evil? How?"

"The only way people do anything these days: by force. Unfortunately things are still being worked out. For now, from initial testing, we haven't reached a true sever. Not yet. Guilt remains. Guilt implies conscience." He shrugged as if what he'd just said meant nothing at all. "Conscience doesn't get one to Hell."

"And the cemetery?"

"Evidence that the bodies clawed their way up and out. Since there's been no zombie sightings in town we believe whatever happened here was the end of it."

"Zombies?"

"A body without a soul. What else? But of course those don't do us any good since those souls are already vacated, understand? They can't be corrupted."

"And you want the souls trapped inside so whatever they do can corrupt them."

"And we're finally on the same page."

"That's why I'm here? You think I'd help you with this?"

"Of course you will. Do you know what your own intestines smell like where they're ripped from your body?" Marc gulped. "You have been walking down the path of least resistance for the better part of a decade now. I own you. We didn't have to buy your soul; you've given it to us."

"Then just kill me."

"Ohh, big boy thinks he's got nothing to fear from Hell. Do you even comprehend what Hell is? Fuck fire and brimstone, that's the Fourth of July compared to the real thing. You think you suffer into being a component of Hell? When the fuck did suffering motivate anyone? You're tortured into service. Months. Years. As long as it takes. Everyone is assigned to a master craftsman and he will do whatever he wants and whatever it takes to twist you into a tiny little cog in a much larger machine that couldn't give two shits about you when it's done. You're stripped of everything; you have no name, no voice, and no identity outside of what he gives you and by the end of it you will love and worship him for it. I'll kill you when I'm ready and then that'll be me and you with you on my table, capisce?"

Marc couldn't find his voice. He looked around to the other dark eyes surrounding him. Fear. They feared the man in the dark suit. Marc realized it was time for him to fear him too.

"We're interested in new developments. Your job is to set them up. Jericho is too hot right now. We would have to scale back to effective non-functionality which is useless. We need progression."

"To torture people," Marc said quietly.

"You misunderstand. That's how we change people in hell. Up here torture does nothing for us. You don't get evil from duress, just desperation, perhaps the odd case of Stockholm but nothing significant."

"Then how—"

"My predecessor. Who I . . . apprenticed under."

"The demon who tortured you."

"He was an artist. They said he rivaled Alistair but who knows if there's any truth to that? He developed the first incarnation of the weapon we're developing in Jericho. Deployed it in Roanoke, Virginia in the sixteenth century. The recipe was lost but we've been rebuilding it ever since."

"Lost? He doesn't remember it?"

"He was killed in Hispaniola in 1790. We're still not sure how it happened. Gunshot wounds. The bullets had unique markings. Unfortunately he took his secrets with him."

"So, he built a, what? A poison that can make people evil?"

"Spiritual warfare, Marcus. Infect the mind, infect the spirit."

"Infect? It's a disease?"

"A virus that is so powerful it can drive a man to murder the love of his life, a mother to kill her children, all potentially without remorse. In its purest form the virus destroys all sense of right or wrong. My predecessor named it after himself as it was his legacy: _Croatoan_."

"And it makes humans act like demons."

"We have a little more finesse than those creatures. I'd say, more like human hellhounds."

"But if the goal is to keep souls from Heaven, won't you have victims? Won't you need victims to . . . I don't know . . . to qualify the evil? To define it? Those victims, won't they just go to Heaven?"

"Do you know what a violent death does to the soul of a person who cannot comprehend why they were killed in the first place?" Marc shrugged. "It creates a terrestrial spirit. A ghost. Bound here for all eternity." Crowley looked out over the devastation. "I'm not seeing much of a downside, are you?"

* * *

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	30. Inside Man

**Chapter Thirty  
**

**Inside Man**_  
_

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.

Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

-John 14:27

.

.

.

He woke up in his bedroom at home. There was some disorientation at first. The last thing he remembered was telling Jess he was coming home and then he was waking up there. The idea that he was losing time gave him a shock that sent him bolt upright, his weary eyes connecting to a lance of white hot early summer daylight that streamed through his windows. It was finally morning but of what day he had no idea.

"Don't be angry," a voice said from the corner of the room. Dean turned to see Balthazar there, standing, waiting. He could see him, clear as he ever could which told him time had passed. Too much time.

"You knocked me out?" Dean asked, feeling and sounding groggy.

"You needed to rest."

"You don't make that decision for me," he said, trying to work up to a healthy anger but feeling like his emotions were passing through a sieve.

"I do until you understand that they're going to need you, whole, and sooner than you'd wish. Everything's going to turn upside down in their world and Harvey missing prom does not count as all that terribly serious in the grand scheme of things."

"What the hell do you know about '_the grand scheme of things_'?"

"Spoilers." But Balthazar hadn't said it at all as playfully as he first had. There was something heavy in the word. Something ominous. "Whatever I tell you or ask you not to do, it doesn't matter because in my timeline you've already done it, but maybe I can affect the future as I'm about to experience it and as you're about to live it, minute details unknown: don't attempt to do anything you cannot handle on your own. I'm here—"

"—to roofie me."

"To make sure you survive. This expedition, this entire war, is to make sure this world and every other world survives. If I _have_ to 'roofie' you to 2010 just to ensure that then I will."

"Oh, because you care about the world, now?"

"No, Mother, because you do. Because that's all you, Spencer, and Sam care about: saving people. Break you three down to your core essentials and that's all there is but right now you can't see the forest for the trees."

"Those 'trees' are kids. _My kids_. Guess what? They're 'people' too. I'm not gonna ignore them if they're hurt. Period."

"Then unfortunately this is what we call an impasse." Balthazar tossed an envelope to Dean. Catching it, Dean's eyes were off him for just a second but that was all the angel needed to vanish.

Dean waved the envelope in Balthazar's vacated position with mild irritation. "Adios, Clyde."

He looked to the envelope and on the front, in his own handwriting, it read: _Research This For Him_. The 'him' wasn't defined and all Dean could ask himself was 'who' and 'what.' Opening it he pulled out a rectangle of cardstock that simply read in bold lettering: **PURGATORY**.

His first consideration was Dante, suicides, and unbaptized children. Then he realized he was recalling Apsara's memories of what Immanuel told her Purgatory definitely _wasn't_. What it was, well that was a question Immanuel had tried to answer all his life. The answers weren't in his notes since Dean had read every word on the tablet five times which meant the truth of Purgatory didn't exist in the Vatican. It was definitely a place; Dean knew that from what Mani had said. It was a real location, somewhere between Heaven and Hell but the modern idea of a state of spiritual purification for human souls? Purgatory wasn't it. Dean knew that first hand. Regular people die, they go to Heaven. Bam. That simply meant Balthazar wanted Dean to research a place for an unidentified someone that not even Rome knew about? _Awesome_.

Rolling up out of bed he felt stiff as if he hadn't moved in days. Catching a glance of himself in his dresser mirror he saw he was a fright. He looked like one of the Benders who had just crawled out from the backwoods after a rough night. His beard was almost a week out of control and bordering on 'religious ascetic.' His hair was a shaggy mess. What he didn't see however were bruises. His skin had its vitality again and he didn't look like he'd just dragged himself drunk off from death's doorstep.

A look at the clock told him it was just after eleven a.m. His was one of the three bedrooms in the house with an attached bathroom. Feeling once again like he'd explode, Dean made his way on locked joints to the toilet. Finally getting into the shower he moved as quickly as he could under the jet of water but the warmth of it slowed him. Dean had been to Heaven but that shower felt a million times better. He hadn't heard the knock on his room door but the follow-up knock at the bathroom door startled him.

"Dean?" He heard Kathy's voice call out to him.

"Hey."

"When'd you get in?"

"Who knows?" He said honestly as he finished up. "Who's home?"

"Just me and Harvey. Harry's coming after lunch so I can head in."

"I'll stay with him," Dean said as he turned off the pipe.

Kathy was glad she could drop her voice a little once the water had stopped. "Are you going to—?" The way she leveled off before saying anything told him enough.

"I can. I mean, I figure that's the only reason I was allowed to come home," he said in a grumble.

"Dean . . ." Kathy seemed to be trying to find her voice. "As much as I _desperately_ want you to, and as much as I hate seeing him like this, I don't think it's something that should happen—"

"Kathy—"

"What I mean is, everything he understands about . . . everything will be changed. I don't know if that kind of revelation is justified for the situation. He'll heal, he'll be fine. Do we change his basic understanding of the whole universe for . . . _prom_?"

Dean hadn't even had time to consider all of that. He had immediately gone from shock to unconsciousness so consequences hadn't occurred to him. Balthazar had already said that their lives were going to go flipside soon enough and Dean knew, with a tightening of his chest, that the woman just beyond the door, the one woman he knew better than any other woman in his life, was simply not going to survive despite all his best efforts (of which he vowed they would be fierce). Could he take away Harvey's security in the sanity of the world just to make sure he'd go to prom? As if anyone could even deal with prom after a revelation like that? In the end Harvey's body would be healed but the rest of him would be broken, maybe beyond repair.

"Is he in pain?" Dean quietly asked from the other side of the door. He'd resigned himself to the fact that Harvey might not go to prom with his girl but he might just leave high school with his faith in his reality unshaken. Wasn't that what he'd wanted for them? If Christian hadn't stuck his oar in, Jess would have the same stability, even if it was a lie, but there was still hope for Penelope and Harvey, at least for a while, and something like this couldn't be what uprooted their lives. Dean knew he just couldn't be the one to do that.

"He says he's not but, come on, it's Harvey. He wouldn't," she said, sharing a universal truth about her son.

"Yeah. Well, at least lemme do something about that."

"Thank you," she said beyond the door. He heard her leave the bedroom a moment later. He dressed in silence and felt thoughts and feelings pass over him but he declined to pay attention to them. He just wanted to feel blank. Under that roof Harvey was hurt but Dean had made the conscious decision to do nothing. Rationally the decision made sense but he'd assumed after all this time the old truism was still valid: _we do what's right, not what makes the most sense_. But this secret wasn't Dean's, was it? He considered that. Kathy had raised the kid, literally, since the night he was born. She was the only mom he'd ever known. Finding out she had omitted a very large part of herself, finding out she and her entire family had power he couldn't _begin_ to comprehend—that was for Kathy to say just as Dean's own secrets from Penny were his and only his to tell her. If he could have healed Harvey that Saturday morning just as it happened, in all the confusion in the ballpark, before doctors and x-rays and a hospital stay had gotten between them but fate had chosen for Dean, hadn't it? Friday night he'd saved his dad. Dean realized why he didn't know Harvey's future. If he'd known then of course Dean would save his dad but he would have chosen to leave that old building standing, just to conserve his energy for the following day. He would have chosen to protect Harvey over covering his and John's tracks. Whatever the consequences of that potential decision, Dean didn't know, but he could assume the future as he knew it would have changed.

"And then what would happen?" He pressed the question to Him up above. "The paradox rips the world apart or I start disappearing from the photo like Marty McFly?"

Dean looked to his dresser and to his small knickknack box. Penny had made it for him a few years ago, though she called it a _jewelry box_. In it he had the few items of his from the future that he'd stored away that Friday just in case something happened to him while he was in Jericho. He'd been wary of bringing anything that could be taken off him if the job had ended him, especially if John's problem in Jericho had been of the demonic nature. There was his copy of Death's ring, and the key that could open any door he'd gotten from Chuck's house in New Jersey. Dean realized how handy that key would have been when he'd tried to get into that locked iron door. He retrieved those two powerful items and put them in his pocket. He decided from that point on to never leave the house without them again no matter what. Knowing that Marc might bring pain to their home was enough to force that decision.

In his Go bag he'd had the Demon Killing knife which Balthazar had pointedly told him to leave behind in the car and upstairs the iPad was hidden in a wall panel. He considered the tablet only for a moment but knew that if he'd had it on him while he was out for the count he could be sure Clyde or John would have been on it without hesitation. Exactly how much of the story Balthazar knew, Dean couldn't say but his incomplete knowledge regarding when Cas had lost his connection to Heaven told Dean there was still info the new angel in his life didn't yet know. Then of course if John got a hold of it . . . it wasn't worth considering since Dean suspected the moment John even touched the computer the world itself would keel over and die.

Harvey was lying in his bed listlessly thumbing through a new copy of Sports Illustrated. He seemed half asleep despite it being the middle of the day when Dean spotted the bottle of painkillers on the side table alongside a half-empty glass of water. Harvey often refused to even take Motrin when he was thigh high in dirt after a grueling game or practice. That he would then take those pills meant he was in an entirely new world of pain.

"Dean!" Harvey exclaimed with a slow, breathlessness to his speech that confirmed to Dean that he'd taken the medication. "How d'you feel?" Christ, now Dean understood how Clyde felt when he'd kept asking after John. Seeing the kid like that, Dean couldn't think of anything but how _he_ was.

"Better than you look. Harve, what happened?" He asked, sitting at the side of the bed.

"Oh," Harvey looked to his arm as if reminded. "I told coach I didn't wanna start then fate slapped me upside the head." He said it so dry and plainly that Dean hadn't been sure when to laugh, 'cause despite the topic, the way he said it was funny. "No good deed, right?"

"Lemme take a look at it," Dean said as he gingerly placed his hand on one part of the injury. With a silent breath, Dean eliminated his pain. Harvey was too deep into the rabbit hole to recognize the difference but he'd never be able to pinpoint when exactly the pills finally wore off. It took all of Dean's concentration to keep the grimace of pain from his face. He was just glad it wasn't a full healing or Harve would likely freak out if Dean had suddenly started to bleed. "Ow," he said of both Harvey's injury and his new pounding headache.

"It's feeling better so it's not so bad," Harvey said intending it to be a boldfaced lie but then he evaluated exactly how he felt and realized it was the truth. He did feel better.

Dean watched the kid's face go through the gamut starting at doubt, to confusion, through relief, and then finally settling on gladness. Dean felt every part of him itch to do more, to just end the games and fix him but he couldn't. On the scales were Harvey's reality and an injury that would never again hurt him. There was no real choice.

"I guess the season's over for you," Dean said.

"Well, we won at least. I mean, well they won."

"They did?" Dean asked, having figured most of what Clyde had told him was bullshit.

It was there that Harvey had an inscrutable look about him. Dean couldn't be sure if he was glad or sad but it would be normal to be both. He had been willing to sit out the game but just by deciding that he was hurt. In the end, by staying home, he would have fared better.

But . . .

"Maybe seeing you go out like that made them fight harder?" Dean offered.

"That's what the guys said," Harvey said as he finally cracked a smile. "They stormed my room after the game. The nurses almost called security."

Dean mirrored Harvey's smile picturing their entire team crowded into a hospital room high off the biggest win of their lives. The nurses probably should have called security. "Well, then you've got your answer."

"Huh?"

"They did need you." Dean watched Harvey get pensive a moment as he contemplated that.

"There has to be easier ways to win a game," Harve finally said with a smirk.

"Thinking about the future?"

"Nooo," he said, clearly having thought about it a while. He got that from Kathy. "Baseball's kinda off my list. It stopped being fun when they fixed my shoulder." Dean gave a little hiss with his own memories of resetting a dislocation. "I'm thinking maybe basketball?" Harvey looked to Dean's doubtful expression and he scoffed, "Dude, I know I'm three feet tall, I mean for fun."

"Ohh," Dean nodded, readjusting his thoughts.

"Not funny, Dean."

"Not laughing."

"Hhmm."

"Well, you're going to New York, you prolly should learn to shoot." Dean never imagined he'd ever say that sentence and not be talking about guns. Then he frowned. "You're pretty green in everything non-baseball."

"I know we need a net?" Harvey offered.

"That's a little upsetting, Harve."

"And a ball," he teased.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Now you're playing with me."

"Now, only question is: where's the basket come in?"

"Stop. Just stop."

"Wicker? Picnic? Plastic crate?"

"We can always play Dominoes until September," Dean said as an ultimatum. Harvey bit his lip and said nothing more. "I'll set up the driveway and you'll start off with HORSE soon as the doc says you can."

"Horse?" Harvey asked.

"Funny," Dean said, dismissing the question.

"No, seriously, what Horse?"

"I don't know if you're kidding."

"I really, honestly have no idea what you're talking about," Harvey confessed.

"Wow, okay, we are gonna have a lot of work to do."

"Uncle Marc said I should learn something sedate like squash. My ass—" Harvey said before recalling that though he was his buddy Dean was still a third of the parental unit. He started to shuffle and backtrack out of what he said but realized Dean hadn't heard him. His face was like ice.

"You talked to Marc?"

"Oh." Harvey took the easy out with thanks. "Yeah, he tried calling after the game but didn't get us, you know, 'cause the hospital and everything—"

"He didn't go to the game?" Dean tried to ease up on the aggression behind his questions. He was talking to Harvey, not interrogating a suspect. He laced a quirky frown in a half smile before asking, "I thought we got him a ticket?"

"Emergency business trip or something. He talked to dad about it, I don't know." Dean nodded at that. Harvey then looked like he'd just remembered something. "He left a note for you."

Dean frowned at that. "With Harry?"

"It's not in your room?" Harve asked. Dean shook his head. Harvey limply shrugged, looking sleepier than when Dean walked in which hadn't seemed possible at the time.

"It's okay, kid. Go to sleep," Dean said watching as Harvey tried to fight the pain medicine and lose the war as he blinked his eyes shut. "I'm glad you're okay," he said quietly. Harvey groggily repeated the same to Dean before drifting off.

Dean couldn't explain the sudden shot of anger he felt at the idea of Marc being anywhere near the kids. He was still their uncle and there was still the fact that Dean had no actual proof he was involved in anything remotely _otherside_. Dean actually had no idea what business Marc was currently in since he had the good enough sense at family get-togethers to stay on topics that didn't remind the family that he'd bilked them but good. For all Dean knew, Marc was a dog catcher now.

Dean settled Harvey in, got him a new glass of water, and double checked the room as he had when Harve was little. Seeing him like that, eyes closed, pale and broken . . . Dean pulled up the bedroom door without closing it.

Kathy was in the hallway dressed for the office. She took one look at him before wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug. Dean hadn't realized he needed one until he got it.

"I should have been here for him. Maybe not to change things but just to be here."

She pulled away with a look telling him that he was incorrigible. "Dean, you'll never be able to change every bad thing and you'll sometimes just not be there for them. You know that. It's life." She only caught the irony after she said it. "Well, okay, I probably shouldn't be discussing the nature of life with the Nature of Life, but . . ." she gave his arm a little punch, "Self actualization is the goal, right?" She laughed a little, meaning for it to be a joke but not knowing it was the truth for him.

His experiences in the past were all about coming into himself, learning what he could do and could never change and acknowledging it and letting go some of the blame he always held onto. The idea hadn't shaken him up so much since Penny's run-in with that goddamn clown. Now he realized certain choices he'd make would save one and leave another vulnerable. Saving his dad and not knowing Harvey's future had caused a blind choice but what about full and well informed ones to come? In 17 years his little girl was going to be shot point blank by a psychopath and nowhere in the story does it discuss her daddy swooping in from the shadows to lay a healing on her. Now he knew, because of Clyde, that he survived to time travel. He makes it back to 2010. Dean had always assumed something terrible happened to him before 2007 to stop him from saving Penny but now . . .

"Oh, that look . . ." Kathy began, her face serious again as she watched his expression change. She took his hand in hers and gave it a good squeeze. "It was so heavy like the world was sitting square on your shoulders. Don't forget, Dean, you're not Atlas."

Of all the things he had told Kathy, many others he had kept from her. The existence of angels, knowing God on a first name basis, and his own essential role in it all. Being _elemental_ was abstract and being from a family of witches who drew their power from nature it wasn't too hard to wrap her mind around but the larger truth, his larger truth, had been kept from her. Only, he would admit one thing, then, out of tiredness, frustration, or both, but he would admit one thing to her and ultimately to himself in that moment—

"Yeah, I am."

_The lamb, looking as if it had been slain_ . . . Hell hadn't done that. Forty years in Hell had gotten him to that point as much as forty years in the desert had gotten Moses to the Promised Land. No. It was generation after generation of keeping all of this together and trying to keep sane at the same time.

He kissed her forehead. His 81 years of living was suddenly wearing him down. He wanted to erase the new confusion from her mind but knew he couldn't and so he left her there in the hallway on his way to find that note from Marc.

Katherine watched him disappear down the hall. She felt she should have pushed back against that idea but she hadn't. Why hadn't she? Part of her knew deep down it was true. She couldn't evaluate how that made her feel. Time traveling force of nature under her roof, but having him say that left her perfectly blank. Dean put a lot on his shoulders and felt responsible for everyone. She had never wondered if that was just his nature or his burden. If he decided one day to just stop fighting nothing around him would comply. It would all keep going and keep gnawing and innocent people would continue getting caught in the crossfire. The most he could ever do is wash his hands of it all and sit back, just refuse to help, and always know that in his comfort was someone else's pain. If he hadn't known and done so much, he might have the chance to be normal, to be a regular person, but he'd grown up in the middle of a war. No one was ever allowed to abandon the battlefield even if the battle raged until the day they died. It was the simple nature of war.

Deep down she understood him, that's why she didn't challenge him. It was the core reason she had wanted to keep the truth of herself from Jessica and Harvey, but especially Jess who might have grown into some latent power as she got older. As Wallace had been confronted with a war he had the toolkit to join, so would Jess eventually have to come to the decision whether to join or stay apart from the fight. With knowledge came responsibility. Responsibility had killed her husband before he'd even had the chance to know his daughter. Katherine had shirked her role in the war against evil to keep her family safe. Mary had done the same with Dean and Sammy. Right choice or wrong, she couldn't know. What she did know was that Mary's decision hadn't saved herself or her children and Kathy always wondered if her decision to abandon her post in the fight would have similar consequences.

So she watched Dean walk away and couldn't say one way or another how his confession made her feel. She had left the fight behind and she knew she'd done it for the same selfish reasons her best friend, his mother, had left the fight behind. She didn't feel it was her place to tell him where he fit in life when that question had been decided the night Mary died.

* * *

Dean checked his bedroom, the living room, and the kitchen before he resigned himself to the idea that perhaps Marc had left the note with Harry. He didn't want to take too much time looking; he needed to be near Harvey's room in case the kid woke up and needed something. Going up to his attic office to check his faxes and shoot a call to Dave that he was still breathing, Dean saw on his large map that something was different.

The attic office, every night before he went to bed, was left in pristine condition. Nothing that could point to his nightly exploits was left out for a curious Penny, Harvey, or Harry to find. The faxes from Dave were coded in an FBI cipher Dean had to learn at the outset. His weapons and Kathy's library were hidden in secret cubby holes he'd built into the walls. To anyone who entered during the day, it was a _man cave_. Random sports memorabilia was positioned haphazardly around an easy chair facing a small television. A mini fridge with beer he never touched more than once in a while was in the corner. The only thing ever out was the wall-sized map. Even this, which was usually covered in colored pushpins showing current hunter deployments, was kept clean and looking as untouched as the day it was bought. As he had repaired the broken glass the day he met Kathy in Valencia by tapping into his core power, Dean repaired the holes in the map with a force of will and switch grass growing at his feet every night. Of course every night he would go to bed with a tiny buzzing headache but that was the cost of not revealing their locations if his home was ever compromised.

The map had been clean when he left for Jericho but now there were ten red pushpins in it from east to west along the I-80. Observing the shape they made didn't clue him in to their purpose as it was random. It was definitely not a crack in his wall. Dean stepped closer and looked to the areas marked by the pins. Starting from home and working his way across the country there was a pin in Tahoe National Forest, Reno, Elko, Rock Springs, Laramie, Cheyenne, Des Moines, Joliet, Danville, and Parsippany. That made absolutely no sense. His mind went straight for Frank Breitkopf, the I-80 unsub, but other than the interstate, there was no other connection. Dean wondered if this could possibly be the note Marc left for him and if it was, what did it mean? As soon as he asked himself the question he understood. It was a code. For whatever reason, Marc couldn't just write down what he'd wanted to say to Dean and so he left this code. Several different types of codes passed through him as ways to crack it before he pushed them away. Marc wasn't exactly MacGyver. For him to have felt he needed to leave code meant someone was watching him. He wouldn't have time to come up with a complex cipher.

Dean stepped even closer to the map and looked to the pins. Of all the colors he could have picked, Marc chose red. Danger. Urgency. X marks the spot? If Dean read the map like a book, then he'd read left to right. The first pin on his left went cleanly through the 'h' of Tahoe National. The next pin went through the 'e' of Reno, the 'l' of Elko, the 'p' of Rock Springs, and so on until it spelled out 'HELP ME DEAN.'

_The Previous Saturday Afternoon  
_  
"Is he okay?" Marc asked over the airport payphone as he waited for his plane to San Francisco to begin boarding. "I was calling the house and I kept getting your machine. Finally called the ballpark and they told me what happened."

"He's fine," Harry said from a clerk's phone in the emergency room. "Well, he's gonna be."

"I'm on my way."

"Hold on, are you by the house?"

"No, why?"

"Well, they wanna keep him overnight but none of us want to leave him. I wanted to get his pjs and things from the house."

"I'll get it, no problem. It'll take a while though. I'm not in the city but my plane's coming in soon."

"You're still in L.A.?"

"Fresno."

"Fresno? Maybe you and Dean are on the same flight."

"Dean's in Fresno? Wait, Dean missed Harvey's game?" Marc immediately corrected to the more pertinent question. "What part of Hell just froze over?"

"I know, right? We're actually worried. John called for him last night and Dean hopped on the first plane out. John got himself tangled up in something pretty serious from the sound of it."

"And Dean's supposed to what? Bake a cake to get out of it?"

"Don't be an asshole, Marc."

"I'll be the first to defend Dean's cooking to the death but c'mon? John's always hit me as kinda rough and Dean makes the cupcakes for PTA meetings. How the fuck is he the cavalry?"

Harry exhaled. It was the primary question he'd been asking himself all night but he saw more of Dean than his brother did to not question his resourcefulness. "He taught Jess how to use her bow like a sniper rifle and then topped it off by making sure she could name and then break the bones in a hand. I think the cooking is a hobby compared to the stuff he learned growing up."

"You're serious? Well, fuck. Damn. Okay. Remind me to never vacation in Veracruz." The brothers shared a laugh at that. "Well, I'll look out for him but it's not like him to keep you guys hanging. Hope Fresno's being gentle on them."

"He only flew into Fresno but he was renting a car to drive into Jericho."

Marc said nothing for a while. He was so perfectly quiet that Harry would have thought they'd lost connection if not for the busy airport sounds in the background.

"Marc?"

"John called Dean from Jericho?" Marc asked, his throat very dry.

"Yeah. Talked to Penny for half a minute before the phone cut off, apparently. She was pretty shaken up."

Marc's first thought after the blaring between his ears calmed was a perfectly normal consideration: John Winchester had just somehow got caught in the middle of the zombie horde. How the hell was that 'normal?' Well, compared to other options, it was at least logical, but when properly evaluated given the facts it made his calling Dean completely irrational.

If John had been in Jericho and encountered a perfectly normal confrontational situation he simply couldn't handle on his own, Dean would never have missed Harvey's game, or at the least, he or John would have called. If they'd been hurt, the way Crowley and the demons had locked down the town, Marc would have heard about a pair of town visitors in a scuffle given the all-out manhunt for the hunter(s) Crowley was talking about.

If John had been caught in the zombie horde, Dean would be farthest down on any list Marc could imagine. First would be the cops, second the National Guard. He came firmly back to his original question: what was Dean supposed to do?

But . . . bow and arrows, bones in the hand, and now Jericho?

"My plane's being called," Marc said, lying to his brother.

"Don't forget—"

"Swing by your house, got it." When he hung up the phone his thoughts were occupied with the possibility that Dean, the man he'd known almost exactly for ten years, Kathy's cousin, wasn't who he seemed to be.

Marc looked to the airport around him and suddenly felt very paranoid that what he now suspected could somehow be jiggered from his mind. Crowley knew what he was doing when he revealed so much to him that morning. He would only say so much if he was positive Marc had no outside resources. Marc was already watched at work and at home in L.A. but when he visited San Fran the noose got a little looser. His family had already been vetted and the demons were sure that due to the nature of Marc's deal, confession would be his damnation. Marc had never known how he could reach out for help without being able to say anything directly to anyone since his situation was insane at best. And until that morning he'd never known of there being anyone who _could_ help him. Now that he was officially part of the inner circle, Marc knew the watchful eyes on him would simply be far more attentive but until that moment it hadn't mattered. He had been a doomed man. Now . . .

Now, praying Dean was alive and then praying he was also who he might be . . . Marc felt something like hope. There was light at the end of that tunnel. He didn't have any illusions. For him, this would end bloody, but maybe that light was Heaven and not Hellfire.

* * *

"I got your message," Dean said, immediately calling Marc on his attic phone.

"Oh, okay," Marc stammered a little from his corner office in downtown L.A. His heart was skipping. When the family found out halfway through Saturday afternoon that Dean was fine but injured, Marc felt equal parts relief and panic. The note was cryptic and to all of Marc's knowledge of Dean, he wasn't cryptic nor particularly deep. If he saw the pushpins and actually took the position of considering it code then part of the story would be confirmed to him. The Dean Garcia he believed he knew would react the way any other normal person would to seemingly random pins stuck into a map—he'd just pass it over as Penny or one of her friends playing around. If Dean had actually been as Crowley said of the hunters, 'special forces' then Marc suspected he would immediately see the message there. Dean had seen the message.

"I don't think this is the best time—to talk about that catering job," Marc hoped he and Dean were on the same page enough that Dean would understand the makeshift cover.

"Someone's there?"

"No, I just don't know if I can talk here about it. It's a surprise."

Dean pulled out the iPad. "Almost lunchtime right? I want you to get to a payphone. There's one six streets down, five over, across from a jewelry store—"

"I know it."

"Chop chop."

Marc didn't rush out; he didn't leave the building like his soul depended on it even though it did. There were too many black eyes in the building now for him to act in the least bit suspicious. He simply took an early lunch, as he usually did, and walked out like he owned the place, which was partially true as he was President and Chairman of the Board.

He took a rather circuitous route to the payphone, making sure anyone watching would assume the call was a casual affair. He walked over to the high-end jewelers and saw as someone stepped to the payphone and dropped a coin in it.

"Shit," Marc cursed. Waiting to use that phone in particular would look suspicious as hell as there was another bank of phones across the street but just as he began to worry, the man on the phone jiggled the bar to return his coin and just cursed as he made his way to the other phones. Marc frowned. If it was out of order then he'd just have to call Dean back on another—

The phone rang.

Marc froze.

He honestly didn't move for a few seconds as his brain tried to catch up to reality. He broke his casual façade and nearly lunged for the phone. "Hello?"

"What part of 'chop chop' _didn't_ you understand? I could have made myself a sandwich if I knew you were gonna dance around the city."

"How did you know I was standing here?"

"Jewelry store CCTV."

"CCTV means it's not being broadcast. How are you—what the—and the guy in front of me?"

"Cut his call."

"How are you doing this?"

"Sorry, Marc, you don't ask me questions until we're face to face, got it?"

Marc understood. "You think I'm one of them?" He asked, not comfortable enough to utter the word '_demon'_ out on a city street.

"I think you're involved in some deep shit and you need help or you know something you shouldn't. Either way—"

"Abundance of caution. Got it." Marc felt like everything he knew in the world was turning inside out. Dean? Dean Garcia was hacking into CCTV and rerouting payphones? Dean who Harry had confessed to his brother didn't seem to understand how to even operate a Teddy Ruxpin much less a computer? This wasn't possible. "Can we talk on the phone like this?"

"It's a secure line."

Marc was definitely about to enter into a panic attack. The hope he'd dared to feel for the last few days felt suddenly real. Instead of panic, some deep well of feeling inside of him sprang up and his breath caught in his throat.

"Are you—?" Dean began but stopped himself. Yeah, Marc was indulging in a brief breakdown and he gave him a moment. He knew what it sounded like when someone suddenly realized, all at once, that shit just got real.

"I need help," Marc said, calming his voice and wiping the tears from his eyes. "I'm in so deep I don't know which way is up anymore."

Dean had to make sure they were really on the same page. The possibility that Marc had left a cryptic message on Dean's map to get help with some gambling debts seemed nil but he didn't want to just blurt 'demons' if there was really something missing in translation.

"Let's establish a baseline," Dean said. Marc frowned. "To make sure we're not talking over each other about different things."

"Yeah, you're right. 'Cause if I just say it and I'm wrong, Harry'll have me committed."

"And vice versa."

"Okay. Well," he tried to narrow down the facts to their barest thread that would be universally known and then he realized how he got into the mess he was in in the first place. "It started with a woman."

Dean knew a lot of stories that started that way, many of the mundane variety. Like one of Penny's jigsaw puzzles he tried to narrow it down. Jericho had Enochian sigils but they weren't laid by an angel. Assuming demons, Dean laid a piece of the puzzle and asked, "I bet she had great eyes."

Marc went cold. He whispered, "I met her on the road."

"A crossroad?"

"Yeah."

"Shit." Dean closed his eyes. "You made a deal."

Years of weight felt like it was dropping off of him. Marc had never been able to speak to anyone about this and now— "I don't know what to do," he said as his emotions began to overwhelm him. A few people walked by, watching him to see if he was okay.

"Marc, you need to calm down—"

"I—I know, but I—" he was having trouble breathing. "I can't do this anymore. I need help—"

"Marc—" Dean watched the video feed. Marc looked like he was about to have a stroke. If he'd been followed then this was about to be game over. "Fuck. Get in the car."

"Car?" Marc asked, his breath catching. He glanced up to the busy city street.

Dean grumbled, "One-one thousand."

A Black Cat Cab rolled up to the curb alongside Marc and the driver waved him over.

"That—"

"Get in," Dean said before hanging up. He watched Marc walk over to the car.

"Well, there we go. Infestation free," the cabbie said looking Marc over. "Hop in."

"Who are you?" Marc asked, cautiously making his way into the car.

"Decoy," Balthazar said. The moment Marc closed the cab door he found himself standing in Dean's attic room in San Francisco.

Dean was standing across from him, his arms crossed over his chest. He wore a grim and serious look on his face. Marc couldn't take in what he was seeing.

"How did I—" he spun around. "This can't be real."

"Shhh. Harvey's sleeping. You need to take it down a notch."

"Oh my God, how is this—" Marc began. Dean grabbed him up under the arm and set him down on the easy chair. Crowley's voice repeated over and over in his mind, "_Ergo, **angels**_."

"You don't have a lot of time before you have to get back so you need to focus." Dean knew that telling someone to focus wasn't the same as actually making it happen. The panic attack Marc began on the street was about to hit full bloom. Of Dean's options he could slap him, shake him, stupefy him with a little magic, or . . .

Dean put his hands on Marc's shoulders and pulled out just a hint of his true self. Guide and comforter. It emanated from him like a tiny wavering mirage in a hot dessert but it was just enough to bring peace to Marc.

"Breathe," he told him. "You need to breathe." Marc nodded. "We've got maybe five minutes to talk before he makes his way back to your office, okay? You need to tell me everything."

It's been said that confession was good for the soul. Marc couldn't tell because as he finished laying everything bare all his soul felt was naked and exposed. Maybe confession wasn't the cure-all but instead what came after: _absolution_.

Dean took it all in, just listening and fighting not to interrupt with questions or commentary since the clock was ticking but he instantly realized as the story unfolded that his trip to the past hadn't just been essential for the health of his family but it all began here, right here with Marc and the Croatoan virus, the crossroads demon, and of course Crowley. Dean had sent Kathy to Chicago eighteen years ago as a sleeper agent into the Specter family and ultimately Niveus. Why was it necessary when he, Sam, Cas, and Bobby had destroyed the Niveus plant? Because Marc had just told him there would be more than one plant, there had _always_ been more than one plant.

How could they have ever believed all of the tainted flu vaccines containing Croatoan had been at that single facility? How would the rest of the world be infected? Croats took moments to turn from human to zombie; there was no way an infected person would make it across oceans. How could they believe that the demons wouldn't have had stockpiles elsewhere? Records? Croatoan had been their plan for the Apocalypse for years. Hell, when Zachariah had sent Dean to that hellscape future where Lucifer had taken over Sam, Croats swarmed the streets. It was endgame, it always had been.

Tangentially, a small part of him looked back to his Grandfather Théophile's white eyes moments before Dean sent a Colt bullet through one of them. The part of Dean that had been Marie had loved that old man dearly and Dean had killed him before he'd absorbed all of her memories of him. For the last few years he'd been plagued with conflicting emotions about pulling that trigger and now he had discovered the name of the creature that had raised him as her. The man who had doted, who had petted her. He had been Croatoan. A peer to Alistair. Crowley's mentor, his master. His torturer. It was a little easier to release some of his guilt but it unnerved Dean that somehow, the warmness of the memories didn't immediately vanish.

Damn it. The bullets. Crowley's mention of the markings on the bullets led Dean to assume the old Crumpet bastard was out to find the Colt in a bad way. Of course he'd call the markings _curious_. As Apsara, Dean knew that any demon that had ever encountered Dhanurveda over the last few thousand years had been killed by it and when Croatoan died in 1790, Sam Colt hadn't even been born yet to build the gun that had killed him.

"That's why he had Bela out looking for it . . ." he whispered. He glanced to Marc who was watching him with the placid expression still on his face. A dose of peace really went a long way and Dean could tell he had needed it. Nearly ten years of living under Crowley's thumb? Dean was surprised he was still functional.

Marc. The man across from him was perfectly positioned in the company. He might be watched but no one from downstairs would ever suspect him if he never gave them a reason to. Clandestine trips from L.A. on Balthazar's wings to share info would be completely outside of their imagination. Dean knew he had to play this very carefully but Marc was the key. Could Dean be the middleman in all of it though? Bring all this shit into the house? That was another question. And what would he do with the info once he had it? Send John or Rufus out to take down Big Pharma years before D-day in 2010? The demons would just build new plants and try to ferret out their mole. No. This had to be a big, universal operation that would cripple all the outposts at once. Destroying the stockpile didn't even count seeing as that kind of weapon could be stored as data.

_Data_.

All physical and digital traces of the virus had to be destroyed and Chuck had given him a little girl and her band of misfit future-hacker friends who could probably erase the entire internet during a marathon weekend as long as Dean provided the snacks.

Given that Dean knew the exact date and time he, Sam, Cas, and Bobby would hit Niveus in 20 years, it had to be then. Something that sweeping, depending on how many plants Crowley was itching to establish, given the anemic state of the hunter and angelic ranks in 2010 after being ass-deep in fighting and dying in the petty battles of Armageddon, Dean knew he would need a larger resource of fighters.

Heh. He almost forgot he could actually request a tactical strike. Being CIA now actually had a purpose. Sweet.

"I'll explain what I can later," he said to Marc after checking his watch.

"Aren't you afraid they'll just go inside me and takeover? Read my memories?"

"And void your contract? I don't think Crowley would exactly like burning to brimstone by pulling a stunt like that," Dean said.

"Wait, so as long as my contract is valid they can't possess me?"

"Think about it. The minute they make a deal what's stopping them from body hopping into you, diving out a window, and early collection?" Marc shrugged. "_The fine print_. To have a deal, you can't be . . . compromised after making it. It's quid pro quo."

"That's why they took everybody else except me, even though this is my fault?"

"Marc—"

"I'm not wallowing, Dean. I just—never mind. How do I not break the contract on my end? I mean, I just told you everything."

Dean mulled that over a moment before he said, "They bargained for stock. Telling me how you got your hands on it doesn't violate your contract since I'm not—" Dean snapped his fingers trying to recall the agency that regulated banking.

"The SEC?" Mark offered.

"Yep."

"But if I help bring down Niveus, the books'll be reviewed. I won't be able to hide it."

"That's when you plead the fifth, get a _great_ lawyer, and spend a couple of years in Club Fed. Weigh it." Dean said. Marc considered his options and realized where he was when he began the day was an endless pit compared to the hope he had now. He knew this was his last chance and in terms of interventions, this was as direct as anything was ever going to get.

Dean's phone rang. Marc Specter vanished. On the call was Balthazar.

"Are you still angry with me?" The angel asked as he watched from afar as Marc climbed out of the cab and disappeared into the lobby of the building.

"Too soon, Clyde," Dean said trying to sound grumpy but instead feeling too grateful to stay mad. "But good job."

"Understatement. That was an excellent job."

Dean huffed and rolled his eyes. Then he remembered the cryptic message and asked, "Purgatory . . . who's the info for?"

". . . _Spoilers_." The angel hung up.

Placing the phone against its cradle, Dean took a moment to put that new worry away and in the perfect stillness he cleared his mind. He wasn't deluding himself. He knew this could only end badly but he also knew it had to be done. The choice he'd made, to help Marc and essentially save the world in twenty years . . . this was his responsibility as it always had been since the moment he opened the first seal. Just as it was Sam's responsibility to take care of Lucifer, it was on Dean to handle the fallout of the Apocalypse. That meant dealing with Croatoan and the demons. His fear though was in how falling even further down into the sand trap would affect his family. In '95 Penny's biography strikes a discordant tone and things change. He didn't know what exactly remained ahead for them, but adding Marc and this new baggage to the mix? Dean didn't know. What he did know was that whether he had been sent there or not, Marc would still have made his deal and Harry and Harvey might or might not have been pulled into it. As for Kathy, Dean wondered for a moment if it had been necessary to get her and Jess mixed up in this mess, but then Jess's existence as his doppelgänger included her in his life no matter what, it couldn't be helped. And as for Kathy? The first day they met she told him she wouldn't give up her family even if it meant the job was done. She was invested in her home, just as it was, no compromises. Jess and Harvey were her children and she loved Harry. There were no regrets in her life. Would she feel the same if he shared his concerns with her? It wasn't up to him to make that determination, just as it wasn't his when his mom made her decision. He realized for that to be true he would have to tell Kathy everything.

* * *

Penny and Auggie took the bus home after school. Penny hadn't been used to taking the bus as her dad had always picked her up. It was their thing. That week had been different and she was learning how to navigate the city with Auggie as her tour guide. August knew the city better than most who were twice his age. He was determined that Penelope discover the ins and outs of their town so they could share in it beyond their usual weekend excursions with their families.

"Explain it again?" Penny asked. They were strolling down their street having been let off the bus a few blocks back. "_Anybody_ can go?"

"Pretty cool right? Sebastian says a ton of bands go through, good stuff, and you don't have to be eighteen."

"It's in Berkeley?"

"924 Gilman Street."

"They'll never let me go," Penny said of Kathy and Harry.

"Dean'll let you if he gets to go too," Auggie observed with a snort.

"Punk? My dad? Might as well be Bluegrass."

"Metal bands play there too."

"Not close enough. If like Zeppelin was playing he'd already be there," she said, smiling. "Well, when he gets back," she said while trying her hardest not to think '_if he gets back_,' "I'll ask him."

They walked up to the house. Auggie always came home with her after school and he even knew where the emergency spare key was hidden.

"You smell that?" He asked as she opened the door. Penny sniffed the air. "I thought you said Harry was gonna be here?" Auggie asked. When Harry took over the watching of Harvey and Penny it meant takeout. That was not the smell of takeout.

"Mama?" Penny called out as they made their way through the living room, putting their bags down. "I thought you were gonna be at the office—" Entering the kitchen, Penelope Garcia saw her dad setting a few burgers onto plates around the island.

Dean turned to her with a big smile and then let out a chuff of air as she barreled into him. "Daddy!" She wrapped her arms around him.

"Looks like somebody missed me," Dean said. She was still young enough for him to lift without mortifying her sensibilities and so he scooped her up and held her like he would never let go.

"Are you okay?" She breathlessly asked and Dean saw that the question came with some tears watering her eyes.

"All better now," he said seating her on one of the tall chairs. Auggie was already halfway through his burger. They both blinked at him. Penny huffed.

"Man, Dean," Auggie said with a contented look on his face, "Did I ever miss you."

"He's all stomach," Penny observed, scandalized.

"I knew he'd be _fine_," Auggie said as a defense, his mouth half full. "He's psychic!"

"Earthquakes aren't the same thing."

"Who says?"

"Oh, I don't know, _logic_?"

Dean shook his head as they bickered back and forth and just laughed. God, he loved being home.

* * *

Kathy stared down at the tablet. She had finally reached the last page of the Book of Campbell where it had diverted to Penelope's story which sat blank before her.

"It hasn't updated since you got here?" She asked with an alien voice. Kathy had been reading for the better part of four hours, the speed of her intake, which rivaled Spencer's, saving hours but still hampered by the sheer volume of the text, beginning with the Winchester Gospels, before her. It was the first question she had asked since picking the futuristic device up in her hands. Honestly, it wasn't one the questions Dean had expected.

"Nope." Dean kept his answer short. He could see she was still processing everything she'd just read.

"So . . ." she got up and walked out of the attic apartment. Dean waited with a curious furrow in his brow. A few minutes later she returned with a very hard looking drink in one hand and its twin in the other. She handed the twin to Dean. "I don't really know what I thought," she said. Dean had noticed Kathy had the same habit Spencer did of starting conversations from the middle. "When you didn't add details to things I guess I covered the holes with bullshit. I didn't expect—" she took a sip.

"Kathy—"

"You traveled in time. Knew that. You have unimaginable power. Saw that. You were Marie Heloise le Blanc. Got that. Never understood exactly how _any_ of it was possible but I had to just piece it together however I could but Dean, maybe telling me you were the goddamn Holy Ghost would have been important info, you know?" She took another drink. "The motherfucking Apocalypse? You came here from the motherfucking Apocalypse? Angels? Cas, the Cas you talk about all the time—he's an angel? And Athena, apparently? I can't—" she finished the drink. "And somehow, which you haven't really explained yet, this shitcan of worms starts with Marc? Fucking Marc? I'm done. I'm so done right now." She got up looking like she was ready to go.

"Where are you—?"

She blew on her fingers and fire appeared there as if her nails were flamethrowers. "I'm gonna go barbeque a rat."

Dean took her by the shoulders and set her back down in the easy chair, extinguishing the flames as he did. "You're not gonna kill Marc."

"Give me one good reason."

"He's gonna help stop Armageddon."

She took a deep breath then said. "Give me two good reasons."

"He's Harry's brother."

She was tempted to request a third when she just dropped her face to her hands and muttered through her fingers, "Grand-mère, this is too much right now."

"I know."

"Do you?" She groaned. "The life you've lead, who you are, what you are—I don't know if you even _understand_ what excess is. Normal people don't live like this."

Dean nodded and sat across from her before asking, "Since when has this family ever been normal?"

"Cheap shot."

"My trademark."

She sat up and leaned back in the old comfy chair and stared at him for a while. Dean didn't feel uncomfortable under her gaze but he did feel exposed. She was reading him all over again as if the last ten years hadn't been real or honest.

"You were being literal when you said you were Penny's mom." She sighed. "I imagined time travel with some reincarnation thrown in, you know, Marie dies then you were born, not both existing at the same time in the same body. You never explained. I guess I can see why—" she looked down, away from his gaze. Dean realized his expression had hardened just a little and completely unconsciously. "I'm sorry."

"No, sorry. I just never talked about it before. Even back then," he said and he surprised himself with the truth. "And let's just not. I wanted you to read that because—"

"I know. That's what I was thinking about. Penny tells her team that her mom and step dad died when she was eighteen. I guess I just wanted to bounce off of that."

"It might not be true. We don't know which parts of her bio are real and which aren't."

"That's real pain, Dean. You know that. To counsel other people . . . no, it's," she closed her eyes and reached out for the untouched drink in his hand. He passed it over. "When Mary had to hear this, being pregnant was probably the only thing that stopped her from beelining to a bottle of Jack."

"I'm sorry—"

"No, don't do that. Please don't do that. The Dean in there," she gestured to the iPad, "he took on shit that wasn't his. You have gotten too far to go back. You wanna know my choice, right? That's the big question. It's the same as Mary's, Dean. That's why some time in your future and our past you send me that message to head out to Chicago in the dead of winter. I want my family. I want this life. For me, for the kids—when Wally died I was three seconds from getting back into the life. I didn't know how to _function_ on the outside without him. I would have pulled Jess in with me. That would've been the end of us, I know it. With every part of me I know it. Harry was my anchor to the real world. And then him all alone with Harvey? With all this stuff from Marc? No. Harvey's my baby. I can't chose some blank unknown life over him. I can't. I won't. I won't."

"But if you never knew them, Kathy—"

"And would you change that night, save yourself, and never know Penny?" She asked him, point blank. He couldn't answer that. He wouldn't trade Penny for the sun or the stars but he would trade that night in Hispaniola for an old dirty sock. It was an impossible question and he realized the impossibility of answering it after the fact. And that was her point. She did know and love Harvey. She did love Harry. Asking her to give them up for Box X was an insult to the very structure of her heart.

Answering her question he replied very quietly, "I _was_ trying to change it."

Kathy's eyes widened and then she looked away. Her expression told her that she had surprised herself. "Oh God, I'm sorry. That was—oh God, I am so sorry, Dean."

"It's okay."

"No. It's not. I can't even believe I asked that."

"Kathy, it's okay. Unless you skipped the forty years in Hell part, I saw way worse than that."

She shivered. That had nearly been impossible to read. She had to skim and just jump whole sections of that. The darkness that come from him, knowing later what he was, it frightened her. To know the end of the world was near and that kind of evil wanted to take over the Earth . . .

"Take care of the kids, Dean."

"It's too soon for goodbyes—"

"I just want to get it over with so we can take the next five years in stride."

"Please don't say goodbye to me, Kitty," he said, slipping into the familiar. "Not yet."

"They love you. You're practically their big brother and they'll need you when the time comes. I know Marie gave you her love for Penny, I don't have that kind of power—"

"That was the old me," he said, wanting her doubt to just be erased because it made him feel filthy. "She didn't have to. Harvey, Jess, they're a part of me. Don't _ever_ worry about that."

"If it ever came down to a choice—"

"That's what I'm saying," he declared without equivocation. "I'll never let it go that far, but if it does, these kids come first. Period."

She reached out and took his hand, gripping it tight. They sat quietly for a while. She looked down to the smooth skin of his hand then she curiously inspected his face. A sudden revelation hit her.

"What Castiel told Spencer and Derek . . . you aren't aging, are you? The beard and the hair, I couldn't—" Dean's cheeks went as red as the scruff on his face. She looked like she had just discovered his biggest secret. "It's your mask."

He exhaled. "By the end of this I'll be a hundred and one and not look a day over thirty one. Awesome, right?" He asked though his tone betrayed how _not awesome_ he thought it was.

She quickly checked his math then looked as if she were seeing him for the first time. She seemed to want to say something but couldn't clear her thoughts sufficiently to do it. In the end she could only suggest, "Well, you're at least gonna have to start going grey."

He frowned. "You're not."

She laughed and laughed.

He sighed.

"Sorry. Right. Last time you were a woman you were a teenager. This," she gestured to herself, "is not easy to upkeep."

"Mmmhmm."

"Just saying."

* * *

Prom came and went without Harvey though he insisted Cam get the limo he'd rented and the massive amounts of flowers Dean had grown for her. Her last minute date was Sebastian, though he was three years too young for it, since every guy her age was already going or not going but in love with her. That wouldn't fly seeing as Harvey was her one and only. Of the other guys in her group, Shep scared the beejeezus out of her, she'd have to hover over Dmitri to make sure he didn't spaz out on anybody, and Matt would attract all the wrong attention since he was, as her baby cousin Abby had described him, _guh_ with a side of _gorgeous_. Sebastian however was tall enough to be impressive, nice enough to look at and yet completely disinterested with the world in general which was perfect.

She danced her fill, took a million pictures, and spent the after party _not_ at the after party but with the Specter-Pearson-Garcia's who were having a family movie night and barbeque. Sebastian, in his tux (not rented) had in-depth and meaningful conversations with Harry and Tom about databases as Penny and Auggie tried to pull him away to play with them. Dean manned the grill with Jess who was done with her sophomore year. Kathy sat on the other side of Harvey around the television, both frowning at one of the crap movies Harry had rented. Cam, in a change of clothes provided by Kathy, sat on the other side of Harvey, careful to avoid his injured right arm. She loved the feeling of that house. It was everything she wanted of her own place if her family ever managed to settle down.

"I think it's some kind of art film?" Cam posited about the movie. She looked down to the box: _2010: The Year We Make Contact_.

Kathy and Harvey frowned. "What kind of art?" They both asked at the same time.

Penny and Auggie jogged in from the backyard with plates of food for them, fresh off the grill. They took one look at the television screen and made a beeline for it.

"Oh man, we missed it! They're already at Jupiter." Auggie protested.

Penny spun around to the group, "Can we rewind it?"

Kathy and Harvey sighed and Cam just giggled uncontrollably.

* * *

Graduation came and went and the summer passed not too unlike previous ones with Jessica taking a summer internship at her mom's firm. Even a mailroom job at Engel, Powell, and Kinkade was an envious position. That was the first summer Harvey didn't spend at ball camp. Instead Jess showed him the ins and outs of the mailroom and told him their challenge in life from that point on would be to make it to the top floor. Harvey Specter always appreciated a challenge.

Penny and Gus traveled with Tom to the NASA Planetary Science Summer School in Pasadena where he would be teaching both weeklong sessions for the first time. The kids came home with good luck peanuts from the CalTech/NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and a newfound burning desire to be rocket scientists.

"Daddy, I'm _going_ to CalTech," Penny decidedly announced in lieu of a 'hi.'

"I guess you had a good time."

"I wanna build rockets!" She exclaimed.

"And spy planes!" Auggie added.

Dean glanced over to Tom with a 'what have you started?' look in his eyes. Tom could only shrug. They had worn him plum out on the drive home.

Jess's junior year at Stanford started a week before the family would fly Harvey out to New York. Packing into her dorm room she opened her top desk drawer and saw red.

"Harvey!" She shouted.

"What?" He said, spinning in from the common room when he was wiring her phone.

"The hell is this?" She pointed inside her drawer.

He peered in as if he had no idea then said very casually, "I won't see ya 'til Turkey Day. It's a reminder."

"Ooh, I cannot wait until we get to NYU," she said with an edge of mischief.

He blanched. "Jess—"

"Out of my room, Harvey."

"But—"

"Uh uh, out."

He swallowed hard and backed out of the room. She looked into her drawer and read what had been scratched into the wood: '_Jess's Desk. If you're looking for the bodies, check under the bed_.'

"Goddamn kid," she huffed.

A week later the entire family traveled cross-country to start Harvey on an entirely new adventure in his life but the only person who seemed irreversibly changed by the trip was Penny who had discovered Greenwich Village.

"I _never_ wanna leave," she whispered, holding onto Jess's arm and dragging her from one storefront to another. The adults in the group knew the Village well enough to avoid the more . . . exciting shops. Harvey picked up essentials—sheets, a new set of pillows, a lamp, etc. For side excursions they mostly dodged in and out of basement record stores where Dean picked up some kickass vinyls and Harry expanded his already encyclopedic collection of blues and jazz. Jess and Penny bought jewelry and charms with Kathy making sure they avoided cursed objects, which were surprisingly many. At one store, a cashier offered Dean ten thousand for one of his rings and another offered Kathy fifty grand for one of the protective charms on her necklace. Who knew so many practitioners lived in such a small radius? One store in particular had Dean and Kathy there ten seconds before they shooed the entire family out and left with serious words to the surprised poser clerk.

"What happened?" Harry asked.

Dean looked to Kathy. "Um," he said. Well, do they explain the sacrificial alter made to look like a fern planter, or do they go into the wall tapestry hiding the Aramaic summoning chant for a minor demon?

"Fire hazard," Kathy said with a stiff nod.

"Again?" Harvey asked. To him it was a surprise all of Manhattan hadn't turned to ashes by then.

"Harve," his mom said, "I'm just gonna give you a list of places to avoid."

"Um . . . okay?"

At his dorm, they had him set up in no time. They'd promised not to hover that first day. That was for him to discover new people. In the morning they'd have breakfast with him and investigate the rest of New York. Their plane would leave that Monday, Labor Day, so there was plenty of time that weekend for goodbyes.

"Don't forget," Dean said before they left for their hotel. "Balance is what gets them off their feet."

"Dean, I know. Still don't know why you think I need it. I can handle myself."

"You still haven't taken me down yet, Harve," Dean reminded him.

"I doubt anybody trying to mess with me is gonna be a quadruple black belt like you are."

"Prepare for the worst—" Dean began.

"Hope for the best," Harvey monotoned. "Okay, Kwai Chang Caine."

"There we go, grasshopper," Dean said patting his shoulder.

Harvey watched them leave down the hall amidst the flurry of other kids his age and their families assembling this new part of their lives. He turned to head back into his room when he bumped right into someone going at least sixty in a twenty-five zone.

"Whoa," he said.

"Sorry," the guy who had collided into him apologized. He was small and awkward looking, like somehow being both a tiny kid and a big guy in one body. He wore a nervous smile and had a round, open face. He looked harried like he was being pressured from all corners.

"Oh!" The little guy said, as if being reminded of something. "Hey, I'm your RA. I'm just down the hall." He pointed in one direction, double checked that, saw it was wrong, and then pointed in another direction. "I," he looked down to his files and then up to Harvey, "Sorry . . . I have no idea who you are," he said as if finally accepting defeat.

Harvey took his clipboard and found his own name.

"There." He pointed to it.

"Bless you," the older, smaller kid muttered. "Harvey Specter. Out of state. Okay, well, we're gonna do a big tour bus thing tonight to introduce you guys to the city."

Harvey wasn't sure he was down with the double-decker idea. "Wouldn't a map be more practical?"

The kid looked offended. "College is less about education than it is for lifelong friendships," the RA repeated as if he'd been practicing in front of a mirror. Harvey chuckled. It was something his mom would, and actually did, say to him.

He leaned in close to the RA and said in a low voice, "You probably don't want to say that too loud. Have you seen the tuition to this place?"

The older kid blanched and looked unsure of himself. Harvey smiled and put a hand on his shoulder the way Dean would and said, "I'm kidding."

"Oh. Right," the guy started laughing and it was possibly the most adorable thing Harve had seen since . . . well, since Penny had just left.

"What's your name?" Harvey asked just as the guy was about to leave.

The RA turned around, shocked at himself like he'd forgotten an infant on the top of a car. "I have to remember to do that first thing. Right," he said and then made a note on top of a million _other_ notes on his clipboard. He turned to leave again when Harvey cleared his throat. The RA spun around, his cheeks purple.

"I haven't felt this much pressure since my Bar Mitzvah."

"Calm down. You need help?"

"I—" he began but then his spine stiffened indignantly. "You're a freshman."

"Astute observation."

The RA bit his lip and then decided on a whim. He passed the clipboard to Harvey. "Help me. Oh, God, I need help."

"Breathe. Just breathe, calm, relax, and tell me your name."

"Louis Litt."

"Okay," Harvey smiled. "That wasn't that hard."

Louis looked up to Harvey and felt the pressure fade a little. "Felt hard," he observed with a gulp.

Harvey chuckled. "Okay, then. Let's go say hello, Louis."

* * *

The house was very quiet. Abby and Luca had won over their uncle and had returned home to New Orleans at the end of the previous school year. Cam was at UPenn and Harvey might as well have been a million miles away. She was used to Jess being gone but right then Penny felt like in one fell swoop her inner circle had been bisected.

"Daddy?" She asked from the back porch as her dad did whatever it was he always did in the garden.

"Yeah, Baby Girl?" Dean said, checking on the kumquats.

"Auggie's coming over."

Dean hummed. "Since when do you need to tell me that?"

"Can Charlie come over?"

"And since when does she need an invite?" He smiled. Charlie might as well have Harvey's room she came over so much nowadays.

"I don't know . . . I just wanted to talk, I guess," she shrugged.

"Oh," Dean said in realization. He dusted off his hands and looked up to her. "Penny, are you lonely?"

She hadn't really thought about it like that. Maybe? She nodded. He called her over and put an arm around her. "Penny," he said, hugging her. He never once considered that was possible, she had so many friends, but their family had been so close knit that with Jess and Harve both gone now . . .

"Okay, how about instead of coming over I take you guys out. A movie, pizza, you game?" She nodded. "And anytime you want to talk, I'm here. Any topic."

"Any topic?" She asked suspiciously.

"I'm not Harry but I can figure my way around a computer. I can talk." She still looked at him with doubt. "What?"

"I know I'm . . . I'm not Jess or Harvey. I know I like being inside more than out. I can't cook as much as you try to teach me. The only thing I do is computers and I've never seen you touch one. So, this face," she said, pointing to where her doubt was showing in her eyes, "is an uncontrolled response."

He summed that down to, "You think I'm hopeless?"

"I think . . . Shep wouldn't let you join the club."

Dean kinda sorta understood what she was saying. "Okay, so, I have to learn the secret handshake or what?"

She pushed against him, knowing she was being teased. "Daddy—"

"Okay, I know; this weekend I'm gonna put something together."

"_Something_?"

"For you."

"What?"

"Hello, it's a surprise."

"Hmm," she grumbled.

That Sunday Dean called Penny up to the attic man cave. On his main work table was a thin silver metal briefcase. He gestured to it. As Penny came closer she realized that the "briefcase" only looked like one but there were nearly invisible hidden ports at the back and sides. The front of the silver casing had a standard briefcase combination lock requiring a six digit code.

"Your birthday," Dean hinted.

Penny put 050777 in and opened the case. "Oh my gosh." She didn't exactly understand what she was looking at. It couldn't _possibly_ be the first thing that popped in her head. No. No, that was impossible. That was completely impossible.

She forced herself to ask, "What is it?"

"What—what d'you mean what is it? It's a computer. A laptop."

Breath caught in Penny's throat. She looked down to the brushed steel-finish anti-static vinyl keys and the glossy black screen that was embedded in the top lid as if it were a continuous piece of material. She pressed the power button and it came to life, the letters of the keys glowing an electric blue for night visibility.

"I don't code," Dean admitted as if the confession were a stain on his character, "so I got the OS from Harry. He's giving me these weird looks now."

Wide eyed she looked at her dad. "You showed it to him?"

"I needed a beta," Dean said with a shrug.

"That's why he's giving you those looks. Daddy, oh my God," she said. "How did you—"

"Well, a million different Radio Shacks, the Samsonite store," he held up the mangled shell of what had been a brand new Walkman, "and other essential bits you just can't find anywhere else."

Penny spun around and hugged her father tight. Dean held her and said, "Don't ever feel like you can't talk to me. I'm always here, okay?"

"Okay," she whispered.

* * *

"Oh come on! Seriously?" Charlie exclaimed. It was 1991 and junior prom was on the horizon. "You can't go stag _with_ somebody."

"It's called going stag together. Auggie doesn't have a date and neither do I."

"Not for lack of trying. Evan asked you, Craig asked you, I asked you—"

"Charlie—"

"I just think it's time for a little romance, Queenie."

"I'm fourteen. I've got plenty of time for romance."

"And Auggie just, what? Couldn't decide?"

"He likes Courtney but then Emily likes him and having that kinda love triangle with sisters is just not right so he said no to both of them."

"Heh. Right. So he can have them both at the dance without looking like a jerk," Charlie guessed.

Penny confessed, "It was Matt's idea."

"Of course it was." Charlie sighed. "Honestly, he should just take Shep's advice."

"Yeah right. Shep told him to ask Courtney and never mind Emily's feelings. That's not right," Penny said.

"At least it's honest."

"And then Sebastian said to ask Emily. I don't see the logic there."

"Well, Sebastian likes Courtney."

"Okay, there's that," Penny confessed.

"And Dmitri?"

"Well, he said to tell them both his reservations and let them deal with it."

Charlie scrunched up her face. "Harsh."

"Yeah, well, _that's_ honest."

"And harsh. He won't get either of them in the end."

"Yeah, and so he took Sebastian's advice."

"God. Forget them. Can part of our conversation please just ignore those idiot boys for one second? I'd like to live my life knowing that at least once a day I had a conversation that passed the Bechdel test." She took a deep breath. "Penelope Garcia, I'm gonna ask you next year. For mine. Even though I know you'll say no, I'm still gonna ask."

"You'll find somebody better than me to ask, Charlie."

"And if I don't?"

Penny nodded. "Then we'll go stag together."

Charlie's eyes went wide. "Really?"

"Really."

The following year, Charlie knew she wouldn't bother to ask anyone else.

* * *

"Are you sure?" Penny asked. She had comprised a list of every dress shop in the Bay that would cater to her specific style choice. She had even made sketches to visually represent exactly what it was she wanted. She dreamt of going to prom as Marilyn Monroe and the decade she was trapped in defeated all logic.

"It's where I got Jess's dress," Dean said driving towards the Salvation Army store.

Biting her nails, Penny wondered if luck would strike twice. They pulled up to the store and Dean spied that the spot where the mannequin that had worn Jess's dress was empty. Entering the large and musty shop, Dean could see two women step back from a mannequin they had apparently just dressed. Penny's lists fell to the floor and her mouth quickly followed.

"My dress . . ." she whispered. On the ground slid her sketch and it traveled halfway between her and the dress before it came to a halt. It was a perfect match to everything she had imagined. The women looked up to Penny as she raced to the dress and ogled it in disbelief. Dean bent and scooped up the papers. Picking up the sketch he looked to it, then to the dress and then back to the sketch.

"When You meet her, she's going to give You a giant hug, You know that right?" Dean muttered.

One of the two women was the lady who had helped Dean and Jess seven years earlier. To say she was amazed at Dean's luck would be an understatement.

Everything was perfect. Kathy took so many pictures that Penny was sure she was going flash blind but she didn't care, she felt like a real Queen. Charlie had insisted on being there for the big send off and couldn't stop blinking.

On seeing her, Auggie paused like he hadn't met her before. "Wow, Penny. If you were trying to make Courtney and Emily jealous you've achieved your goal." Dean, Kathy, and Harry winced and Charlie snickered at the massive faux pas.

Penelope Garcia popped August Anderson square in the arm. "If you think my objective in life is to make your girlfriends jealous then you are an egotistical pig." Charlie cheered.

He rubbed his arm. Ouch. Wow. She was stronger than she looked. Especially all fluffed up and pink like that. "My humble apologies, Queenie. Then what is your objective or am I gonna get hit again for asking?" Charlie shouted out her vote.

Penny gave a small twirl. "That's perfectly obvious. To make the _boys_ jealous."

The adults could barely contain themselves but Dean was just glad he was one of the chaperones that night. Fourteen years old. Chuck have His mercy on them.

Auggie extended his arm and gave a gentlemanly bow. She took his arm with her head held high. "Well then, let me be the first to congratulate you."

"Second," Charlie corrected him. "I was here first."

Dean muttered to Kathy, "It's all downhill from here, isn't it?"

"Invest in mace," she replied.

* * *

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**_feedback is the only way I can tell if you liked it  
save a writer, spare a comment_**


	31. Q&A

**Question and Answer**

_Note: When the next chapter is posted this section will be deleted and the questions will be incorporated into my profile._

I've gotten a lot of questions and comments lately expressing sadness or frustration with the story. Some of it is the time travel, a lot is the focus on Dean. From the outset let me first explain this trip into the past.

Dean, as a character, compared to Spencer and Sam, is the more broken of the three. In terms of repair, he needs the most work. But that is not to say he is the only one who will get time away.

Spencer will.

Sam will.

I know during those future chapters I'll receive the same questions that I've been getting about Dean. During the early chapters, I've had people express their disdain that there was too much focus on Spencer. It will happen but I have an image of this story, I have pages of notes, I don't want to compromise where it's going after doing it for so long. I understand if this is not something you would like to stick around for. Fast forwarding a decade and a half isn't something that's viable, but I'm leapfrogging as quickly as I can without compromising Penelope's story.

This is also Penelope's story. Please don't forget that. She's finally of the age to engage with us as readers and with her world just as it's about to be broken.

As for the time travel. Time travel is an essential part of Supernatural. I'm a dedicated Whovian as well so when I can play with temporal lines, I will. If that is not something you can stay around for, I totally understand.

If anyone has any suggestions on warnings I can add to chapter one so I can steer people away who may not appreciate this kind of story, please comment. Comments to this Q&A will be copied over to here and answered.

If anyone has any comments or questions about the story itself, I will answer those as well. If you would like spoilers, you can ask, I may not answer for different reasons, the first being that as I write things may change, or it's just something I'm still working out the logistics of.

If you are lost about any logic, ask and I'll try to incorporate into the story an explanation that will attempt to clarify things.

If you like these Q&As then I will try to do them more often.

-L

* * *

**Question via Private Message**

I will admit I am a bit frustrated, but its not because of all the Dean chapters (Ok, maybe a little bit). What really frustrates me is that you make our final scene with Sam finally showing some of his hidden power but then we move on.

When you eventually get back to the present we will need to do a recap. Can you at laest tell me how many more chapters I will have to wait?

* * *

**Answer**

The best solution in this situation is to turn off notifications/alerts and wait for the story to be completed, that way you'll be able to skip past all that doesn't interest you.

To answer the question in general, the reason we saw a glimpse of Sam and then left, is because Sam is the most powerful being in creation (Chuck and Joshua wouldn't be created beings so sheath the pitchforks :p ) and up until that point in "Time I Am" we didn't know what Sam's power was, only that it was without bounds and could destroy or remake. That's the essence of what time is. Sam, as a person, Samuel Winchester, would be in a sort of anxious mode after discovering that about himself. Having him deal with telling people who and what he is, especially added to the fact that he has the Lucifer MacGuffin inside of him, immediately after finding out about himself would be an awkward pressure for him. Giving him the space now, as he reads Dean's story, to get lost in a new narrative outside his own anxiety, will give him distance enough to handle the truth of himself to himself and also to his brother and to Spencer.

Throughout the story the question has hung over Sam "will he, won't he?" and both Spencer and Dean have voiced their doubts. Faced with the fact that Sam can annihilate the most powerful angels with a force of will would have caused conversations Sam wouldn't have deserved in the moment. This is why Dean has to be separated from him and allowed to grow in a way that when he returns to his baby brother, he will be at a point where he can accept other people's choices without feeling everything is his responsibility. When Dean returns to the present, he will have seen enough of life without Sam to acknowledge Sam's agency as an adult person, as he will have already learned with Penny, Jessica, and Harvey, all three in 2010 being adult people in their own right.

* * *

**Question/Suggestion via Comments**

I'm still enjoying the story but here's a suggestion for the summary:

After a demon attack brings the BAU team and team free will together, they find themselves on a journey through time and space to save the world and find their destinies.

I'm sure you can come up with something better phrased but I think mentioning the time travel outright could help.

* * *

**Answer**

I like it! I'm going to work it out and update the summary. Thanks!

* * *

**Question via Private Message**

I understand if u don't want to answer this, its just I personally think its important and want to remember... XD

You said in one of the chapters that the BAU team are important and play a role in the past (I.e. JJ's aunt marrying Art, and also being a hunter) I can't remember specifics for everyone that has been already mention (and I think I'm missing something with JJ...) Could you possibly give me a list of past importance (that is weirdly worded...)?

* * *

**Answer**

Not weirdly worded at all.

How has to BAU fit in the story thus far?

**Spencer**

**Derek**

**Garcia**

**Rossi**

**JJ**

**Emily**

**Hotch**

So far Spencer, Derek, Garcia, and Rossi are active players in the narrative.

Spencer Reid is one of our three main players. His mother, Diana, was born Diana Campbell. She is the eldest sister of Mary Campbell, Sam and Dean's mother. Diana left the life at 16 years old after an explosive argument with her father, Samuel. Spencer was raised outside of the life and only got glimpses of it as his mother's schizophrenic condition worsened.

Derek Morgan is our Everyman, thrown into this world because he first witnessed a demon attacking Spencer at JJ's house fire and then he was nearly killed in his apartment.

Penelope Garcia is Dean's daughter via Marie le Blanc. As a Campbell/Winchester herself, she's got a legacy behind her she is completely unaware of.

David Rossi is a Campbell. He's Mary and Diana's cousin on their father's side. Samuel Campbell and David's mother were siblings. Dave's father was not in the life and didn't want his son raised in it for religious reasons. Dave is half in-half out.

Jennifer Jareau comes from a hunting family. Her father left the life when he watched his own father get killed. Her dad is Joan Campbell's elder brother. Joan's maiden name is Jareau. Joan is a Campbell via her husband Arthur (Art) who is Mary, Diana, and Rossi's cousin through Samuel's side. Art's father was Samuel's youngest brother.

Emily is a le Blanc witch only her powers haven't yet manifested. She comes from Noemi's line. Her family line guardian angel/genius is Balthazar/Clyde Easter.

The only member of the team we haven't established to the main plot is Hotch but that's because Hotch, as team leader, has a very particular role I'm still pinning down but my hesitation to do what I have in mind is my own cold feet. By the time I have to choose, I'll probably do it.

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**Previous Question via Comments**

Great story! I have questions: Is Nishtha a descendent of Mani & Sara, if so, how many great's are there between them? What year are David & Nishtha born?

I hope you can answer my questions, if not, I understand & thank you for reading my review.

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**Answer**

Samuel Colt being Nistha's grandfather, there was:

Mani and Sara (married 1731), (Sara dies before Marie can be born in 1775)  
one of their children, (born mid 1730s)  
a child of that child, (born in the 1760s)  
a child of that child, (born in the 1790s)  
Nishtha's grandmother born around 1815 + Samuel Colt born 1814, (their child born circa 1830-1831)  
Nishtha's mother, being the child of Colt, having Nishtha around 1860,  
Nishtha being about 28~30 in 1888  
David is a few years older than Nishtha.

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**Question via Comments**

I didn't realize until ch 30 that Harvey and Jess weren't original characters. I can't believe the subtext I've missed by not knowing they were crossover characters. Could you please list any other non-CM/SPN crossover characters?

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**Answer**

Jessica Lourdes Pearson from USA's Suits

Harvey Reginald Specter from USA's Suits

Louis Litt from USA's Suits

Arthur (Art) Campbell from USA's Covert Affairs

Joan Campbell (nee Jareau) from USA's Covert Affairs

August (Auggie) Anderson from USA's Covert Affairs

Camille (Cam) Saroyan from FOX's Bones. Why choose Cam? Well, both of her ex-boyfriends would have ended up in Gambler's Anonymous. Lucky girl. Ha, kidding, though that helps. You'll see her connection to the Jeffersonian will help out in a later chapter.

Abigail (Abby) Sciuto from CBS's NCIS. Devout Catholic goth? I'm so there.

These are direct Show to Show crossover characters  
I also have a few blends.

Balthazar on SPN is played by the same actor, Sebastian Roche, on CM where he plays Emily's former Interpol partner Clyde Easter. I melded the two.

Charlene Devereaux is Charlie Bradbury from SPN. In SPN she establishes that it's not her real name. We also had a Frank Devereaux in SPN who was also a computer genius who lost his family to demons so don't be shocked if he's mentioned in passing as her crazy uncle.

Ashley (Luca) Sciuto as Ash "Dr. Badass" is there. Ash was the only genius in Heaven who could use string theory to move between heavens so don't worry that Abby never hears from her brother again. Her faith and his application, they'll be okay.

Matt, Sebastian, Dmitri, and Shep aren't crossover characters but homages to:

Matt Cohen aka John Winchester the Younger

Sebastian Roche aka Balthazar aka Clyde Easter

Dmitri Tippens Krushnic aka Misha Collins aka Castiel

Mark Sheppard aka Crowley. For him I didn't want to use 'Mark' or he might have been mistaken for Mark Pellegrino, aka Lucifer.

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Why Harvey and Jessica from Suits? Well, Mike Ross is a genius with an eidetic memory who lost his parents in a car accident. Honestly, how could I resist? Now Penny and Harvey will both have their own baby genius in their pockets.

And then there's Gina Torres. That's all that has to be said, I think.

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I also want to explain why 2007 helped choose some of these characters.

2007 is when:

**All Hell Breaks Loose**

Sam is killed

Dean makes his deal

Spencer is abducted

Penelope is shot

Ash is killed

Auggie is blinded in Afghanistan

It's a big, big year.

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**Feel free to keep asking questions, either through comments, signed or anon, or via PM. **

**If there was a question asked in the comments from previous chapters, feel free to point them out and I'll share the answer I sent the asker.  
**


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